Six Apart has just announced the sale of Livejournal to Moscow-based SUP.  SUP has launched Livejournal, Inc., an American company, to operate and manage Livejournal globally.  In October 2006, SUP and Six Apartt entered into a licensing agreement for SUP to manage www.livejournal.ru, the Russian-based system.  Now, they've got the whole thing, and some fans are cheering that Six Apart is gone, while others are eyeing the horizon and wondering what's next.  SUP (pronounced "soup") was involved with some privacy concerns earlier this year after the takeover of the Russian license, and SUP admitted to at least one privacy breach, though the others were later claimed to be misunderstandings of the system's functionalities.

Of special interest is the return of LJ founder Brad Fitzpatrick, who's been working wth SUP (and Google).   Livejournal Advisory Board is being created, which will include "industry experts," Fitzpatrick, and Livejournal members (two, to be elected) who will serve on a rotating basis.  In theory, this will keep Livejournal's policies more closely in line with the needs and desires of the userbase.  Fitzpatrick's presence is a welcome thought, however PR-driven it might have been.

Two new communities, LJ_2008 and LJ_Policy, have been set up to help users ask questions, find out what's going on, and help form Livejournal policy.  (Possibly they've gotten tired of comment after comment on the News posts that read: "Well, that was a dumb idea." This is your opportunity to tell them that the flagging tool needs to go away.)

No one knows how this is going to affect users yet.  LJ Staff says there are plans to roll out new features for Basic and Plus accounts, but hasn't yet confirmed that Paid and Permanent accounts are still going to exist.  Will SUP's policies reflect the needs of Russian laws, or will the existence of Livejournal, Inc. keep the service's laws based on U.S. law?  And did they do this because they were sick of the pirate songs?

We'll keep an eye on the situation here.  In the meantime, if you are a Livejournal user, don't forget to go by http://www.livejournal.com/manage/settings/ and fix your journal's default settings for content (bottom of the page).  Otherwise, you might notice that your Friends List has vanished.