Comments on: Six Apart and Live Journal

By: firasd.org » Six Apart to buy LiveJournal?

firasd.org » Six Apart to buy LiveJournal? — Sat, 08 Jan 2005 15:00:30 +0000

6A and Danga teams and wish them luck. Update #3: I lied; there is much more to add. Matt analyzes the prospects and can’t figure out a [...]

By: Anthony Batt

Anthony Batt — Thu, 06 Jan 2005 06:25:14 +0000

This deal may end up working our great for all. Why not?

By: jess

jess — Thu, 06 Jan 2005 04:54:48 +0000

me = PAID LJ USER & PROUD. :p

By: Dante Evans

Dante Evans — Thu, 06 Jan 2005 04:18:41 +0000

I don’t think there can ever be a monopoly in the blogging buisness. I don’t think Blogger and MSN would merge, but even if they did there would always be a few 3rd Party people like the WordPress folk.

As for moving beyond personal publishing, I really hope that 6A will see this oppurtunity.

By: R. Marie Cox

R. Marie Cox — Wed, 05 Jan 2005 17:02:34 +0000

This could be a really, really good move for MT. Don’t forget that one difference between MT and Blogger is that MT wants to be a publishing platform, not simply blogging software. They already sell commercial licenses to corporate clients and, if anything, I would expect them to target those more aggressively; creating more software specifically tuned for the needs of those users. To do that effectively, however, would take some serious knowledge and experience with cooperative environments without sacrificing MT’s distinction from other collaborative products.

So, I agree that they are after the human resources as you suggest, but I also wonder if they want that talent to move beyond personal publishing.

By: Matt

Matt — Wed, 05 Jan 2005 15:54:30 +0000

Please keep the comments polite folks! any further comments that make personal jabs at 6A will be deleted. Quarter of a billion may be a bit high, but when VCs typically invest they want many times their investment back. I’m not saying it’s not doable, they certainly have the right people there.

By: TechMount

TechMount — Wed, 05 Jan 2005 15:52:28 +0000

You can find some interesting thoughts about it here.

By: Simon Willison

Simon Willison — Wed, 05 Jan 2005 15:49:11 +0000

Good point - if they get Brad, they're getting someone with significant experience in solving scalability problems - see his OSCON presentation. I do think that this article makes an excellent point about the difference in culture between the two companies.

By: dm

dm — Wed, 05 Jan 2005 15:42:21 +0000

They are buying three things –
a) Profitable business.
b) Profitibale business with a great coders circle that’s only a fraction of SA’s size.
c) Brad.

Essentially they need less “prolific bloggers” and more “programmers” on their staff. Obviously they cant accomplish that themselves so they get yahoo about it.

By: yarbroughs dot org

yarbroughs dot org — Wed, 05 Jan 2005 12:23:11 +0000

Six Apart to buy Live Journal

Link and run:

Six Apart, the people who bring you MovableType and TypePad, are buying Live Journal for an undisclosed amount.

Here’s your link…

via BloggingPro and PhotoMatt….

By: pc4media

pc4media — Wed, 05 Jan 2005 11:54:58 +0000

SixApart buying LiveJoural? Let the Blogging M

Six Apart is buying LiveJournal! Best use of new vc investment: buying market share? buying a new demographic? What about the price structure?

By: Bitacoras.org

Bitacoras.org — Wed, 05 Jan 2005 11:49:00 +0000

Six Apart comprar LiveJournal

Va Business Logs, Photo Matt, Boing Boing…

Hace aos que se viene rumoreando sobre la posible compra de LiveJournal por parte de un grande. Desde AOL pasando por Google antes

By: Matthias

Matthias — Wed, 05 Jan 2005 08:11:16 +0000

Goodbye to diversity. Looks like by the end of the year, there will be only a few blog giants left, with the blog dwarves fighting over the crumbs. Seems to be the way of business. What a pity!

By: Christopher Schmidt

Christopher Schmidt — Wed, 05 Jan 2005 07:21:42 +0000

I think that there’s a lot more business potential in LJ than almost anyone sees, however, it would mean completely changing the way that LiveJournal works and making it run more as a business. The real question, then, is whether with a few new features, LJ can continue to bring in the people it has. For a while, LiveJournal was approaching 10% of active users being paid: to have that now would mean approximately 250,000 accounts, at $25/year, which starts to look like awfully big money to my little eyes.

I don’t know what’s going to happen exactly: my point is that something *could* happen which would increase LiveJournal’s business returns significantly. I’m just not sure it can be done without taking some major risks, and possibly losing.

By: Ian

Ian — Wed, 05 Jan 2005 06:54:30 +0000

As much as I love LJ, I just don’t think it’s a great business opportunity. And, perhaps part of the reason I like LJ so much is that it never seemed to have “business” in mind. It appears to be completely community driven. As for Six Apart expecting to be a quarter of a billion dollar business… where the heck did that come from? Pretty wishful thinking.

By: Christopher Schmidt

Christopher Schmidt — Wed, 05 Jan 2005 06:28:59 +0000

LiveJournal has excellent spam detection and blocking tools, which have worked extremely well for them over the past 6 months or so they’ve been in place. Given that this will give 6A+LJ about 3 times the size of any other closer service (that I can find) I don’t see that anyone else is even close to as big.

Just because nobody talks about LJ doesnt’ mean much in terms of how much potential is there…

By: Joel

Joel — Wed, 05 Jan 2005 05:53:52 +0000

Sorry, I meant to refer to Movable Types’s problems not Blogger/MSN.

By: Roy Schestowitz

Roy Schestowitz — Wed, 05 Jan 2005 05:51:25 +0000

…You’re not gonna beat Google or MS. Especially with the spam and speed/bandwidth issues they have.

Did you not just contradict yourself?

By: Joel

Joel — Wed, 05 Jan 2005 05:43:11 +0000

Who’s left to buy? I don’t see it as a great of a move by 6A; you’re not gonna beat Google or MS. Especially with the spam and speed/bandwidth issues they have.

By: alvin

alvin — Wed, 05 Jan 2005 05:39:02 +0000

In other news, blogger and MSN spaces had decided to merge….