Sale To SUP Media
LiveJournal became extremely popular in Russia. The Russian translation of LiveJournal – ЖЖ (ZheZhe, which stands for Живой Журнал) – has become a genericized trademark for blogging in Russia, and the community boasts something close to 700,000 Russian LiveJournals, perhaps 300,000 of them active.
Six Apart licenced the Livejournal brand to the Russian company SUP Media in August 2006. The deal was brokered with the assistance of founder Brad Fitzpatrick. However, expatriated Russians have expressed concerns, citing links between the company and state security. Some have also worried that SUP's purchasing of the community was less to make a profit and more to curtail or even dissolve the strong independent Russian blogging community, silencing dissent the government found inconvenient. These concerns started with the licensing deal, and have grown with the announcement of the sale.
LiveJournal was sold to SUP Media in December 2007.
Anton Nosik, an advisor to SUP Media, has not reacted favourably to criticism by site users. In an interview given in March 2008, he accused LiveJournal users of "trying to scare and blackmail us, threatening to destroy our business," and stated that a large class of users have as their only purpose bringing harm to LiveJournal and its owners; "their goal is to criticize, destabilize and ruin our reputation." In the interview, he predicted that his likely reaction to such pressure would be to retaliate against the users rather than bowing to their pressure.
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