LiveJournal, the most popular blog platform in Russia has sold to a Russian company for $30 million.
Although LiveJournal is a global brand, almost 30% of its users are based in Russia, which made it a natural choice for SUP - particularly as Six Apart had already given SUP a licence to operate LiveJournal blogs in Russia anyway. And $30 million sounds like a steal to me.
Edward Shenderovich, Head of Strategic Development at SUP explained the logic behind SUP’s decision to buy out Six Apart.
We believe it’s a good business. In the world now dominated by social networks, the role of a “community platform” holds a very special place. We have some ideas about new functionality, new partnerships, and some interesting monetization opportunities. We are very excited about the progress we had made in Russia in the last 6 months and look forward to replicate some of our success worldwide.
Six Apart’s decision to license LiveJournal’s Russian operations to a Russian company led to predictable howls of outrage among a blogger community fearful that censorship would soon be imposed on Russia’s outspoken political bloggers. It’s interesting to see that similar sentiments are beginning to be expressed by US-based bloggers with LiveJournal accounts. (Criticism of the deal is in the comments, not the post itself).
December 4th, 2007 at 9:28 pm
Andy,
You might want to skim this article:
http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2007/12/is_livejournal.html
Paranoia aside, has any other blogger here evaluated Live Journal in the past?
It has a truly awful, clunky interface, poor navigation, bad or no ‘help’ and limited support for customisation. Obviously why no one in their right mind chose it over Wordpress, Typepad or Blogger.
Russians aren’t stoopid, so what was the real reason for LJ’s stranglehold on the market?
December 5th, 2007 at 7:42 am
Interesting article. I’m always slightly amused by these ‘the Kremlin is taking over blogging and stifling freedom’ articles. Who knows - it might be what the Kremlin is attempting, but everyone who thinks it will work has massively misunderstood how the internet and blogging works.
Anyone who feels they can’t say what they want on LiveJournal will simply switch to a new blogging platform.
As to why LiveJournal is so popular, I’m not really sure. I can’t say I’m a fan of the software either.
I guess some of the success is because it had a head start over some of the other platforms (Wordpress and Typepad spring to mind) because it is free and very easy to set up - which comes in handy in a country where home internet access (as opposed to access from internet cafes), although growing rapidly, does lag behind Western Europe and the US.
Not sure why it got ahead of services like Blogger though. Better marketing? More foresight in expanding into and cornering an emerging market?
December 5th, 2007 at 1:02 pm
I think the “social networking” aspect of LJ is possibly what gave it the edge in Russia over the other blogging platforms. Agreed that in other regards it lags behind most of the others.
December 5th, 2007 at 2:37 pm
Definitely it is the social networking aspect that Russians like. LJ is like blogger-for-facebook. My colleagues at work who track the Russian blogosphere across various topics say that, while Blogger is more beautiful and easier to use, material posted on it is just ‘out there’.
On the other hand, they say, the friends’ linked-posting on LJ gives a ‘push’ to material posted and therefore (they argue) means that LJ sites are likely to have higher traffic / more inter-action, than ‘equivalent’ sites on Blogger (if you can peer-group analyze precisely, which you can’t).
My team also says that the SUP acquisition is likely to prompt some defection from LJ; but only to/if people can find a blogging platform with an integrated spocial networking feature.
Of course, the fact that LJ offered Cyrillic ages before Google meant that LJ is now deeply embedded in Russian blogger psyche, in the way Blogger is for Anglo-Saxons like me…
December 5th, 2007 at 9:04 pm
Andy wrote:
Quote: “I’m always slightly amused by these ‘the Kremlin is taking over blogging and stifling freedom’ articles. Who knows - it might be what the Kremlin is attempting, but everyone who thinks it will work has massively misunderstood how the internet and blogging works.”
Yes, the ‘Information Week’ article was really dumb. As if the Kremlin would bother buying a dissident network before shutting it down - if LJ ever was that.
It would certainly be difficult for the Kremlin to take over the blogosphere for propaganda purposes.
There has recently been an analysis of UK political blogs with some interesting conclusions.
Despite the best efforts of big media like the UK Telegraph, with ‘Comment Central’, and the UK Guardian with ‘Comment Is Free’, the most read blogs are still the independents.
“Successful blogs need strong personalities and a clear voice. Readers faced with multiple authors and too many choices of variable and unknown quality decide to click on what they know best, rather than waste time clicking on the unknown.”
Another problem is the content.
“Politics is not popular outside the political elite. For example, far more people watch Sky Sports than Sky News, Murdoch runs the latter as a loss leader.”
The mainstream media could even give up its inroads into the blogosphere.
” A pressing question is, are these blogs commerically sensible? Paying journalists to write on low traffic blogs is not a commercially sustainable model.”
Political parties encourage their MPs to have a blog on their websites. But these are so transparently written by third parties that they have the lowest readership of all, if any.
December 6th, 2007 at 3:31 pm
The friends page sold me on it initially.