Social-media pioneer LiveJournal is the latest company to announce a round of layoffs, trimming down its employee head count in its San Francisco and Moscow offices.
A statement from the company came after a rumor on gossip blog Gawker suggested that a shocking number of LiveJournal employees--20 out of 28--had been cut. LiveJournal clarified that it was "about a dozen" cuts, amounting to about a fifth of the company.
"LiveJournal Inc.'s headquarters, technical operations (and servers), legal, administration, and the customer service teams will remain in the United States," the release explained. "LiveJournal's global product development and design will now be coordinated out of its Moscow office. The pooling of resources between the U.S. and Russia will allow the company to build a stronger business model, well positioned to guarantee the long-term success of LiveJournal."
Yahoo veteran Matthew Berardo, who was hired as general manager of the service less than a year ago, was affected by the layoff.
LiveJournal was founded nearly a decade ago by OpenID creator Brad Fitzpatrick, who sold the company to blog software firm Six Apart. But that led to widespread reports of management difficulties, and late in 2007, Six Apart resold LiveJournal, phenomenally popular in Russia, to the Moscow-based software company SUP.
LiveJournal, the blogging platform that was a few years ahead of its time, announced Thursday that it has appointed Matthew Berardo, most recently the senior director of international business and product management at Yahoo, as its vice president and general manager.
Berardo had been at Yahoo for years, seven of which were spent in its London office at Yahoo Europe. A new senior management team has been brought on board along with him, which includes former employees of Expedia, virtual worlds developer Millions Of Us, and telephony start-up Jangl. Berardo will report directly to SUP CEO Andrew Paulson.
Founded in 1999 by OpenID creator and current Googler Brad Fitzpatrick, LiveJournal was acquired in December by the Russian media company SUP after a stint as a property of Bay Area software company Six Apart. The nearly three years of Six Apart ownership didn't go too well, insiders explained, and a new buyer was sought out. Considering nearly 6 million of LiveJournal's 20 million users are in Russia, SUP made sense; LiveJournal remains headquartered in San Francisco.
LiveJournal, the popular blogging platform/social network from Six Apart, has been acquired by Russian media company SUP. While financial details about the acquisition have not been disclosed, in today's press announcement Chris Alden, CEO and Chairman of Six Apart said the move "...is a great milestone for LiveJournal and also lets us to focus on the core products invented at Six Apart: Movable Type, TypePad, and Vox."
LiveJournal is the first English site in SUP's portfolio, which has a sports news service and two different Internet marketing agencies for audiences in Russia. The two companies partnered in late 2006 to provide better language support and localization for Russian users of LiveJournal (the service's second biggest userbase), and today's acquisition is the second change of hands for LiveJournal after Six Apart acquired it from founder Brad Fitzpatric in early 2005.
Current LiveJournal users shouldn't be too scared about the transition. According to this news post from the company, all of the Six Apart employees who were working specifically on the LiveJournal property are now a part of LiveJournal Inc. The company is also using now as a chance for users to revamp the site policies, along with the feature roadmap.
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