Six Apart, home to the blogging platform Moveable Type, has sold off one of its core acquisitions, LiveJournal, to a Russian media company named SUP (pronounced “soup”).  Acquired in 2005, LiveJournal in many ways was a pioneer in the “social media meets blogging” intersection (now also occupied by Vox, also owned by Six Apart), and has prospered under its stewardship, tripling the number of accounts to 13 million in the intervening time frame.

You may be wondering how a blogging company will do a Russian company like SUP at its helm.

Well, earlier this year, I had written about how prolific — and important — blogging had become in Russia, where I had linked to an article which detailed the birth of Russian blogging via the LiveJournal counterpart, called Zhivoi Zhurnal.

In a place where the political and journalistic organs are not as transparent as other places in the world, coupled with a sophisticated and technologically savvy audience, it seemed like blogging had an important role to play both inside and outside politics, as a legitimate “alternative” form of journalism and media.

Whether its to organize rallies, flashmobs, or providing first hand eye-witness accounts of things, it seems like blogging has found a real purpose there, unlike the angst that some bloggers feel about its existence as a medium, here in the west.

With that kind of background, I suspect that LiveJournal is in better hands than most bloggers might be concerned about.  But time will really tell, I suppose.