LiveJournal sold to Russia's SUP

LiveJournal was one of the first blogging communities

The blogging software company Six Apart has sold its social networking site LiveJournal to Russia's SUP.

SUP has been running the Russian language version of LiveJournal under licence since October 2006.

No details have been given of how much will be paid for LiveJournal, which was one of the first blogging communities.

In October, LiveJournal attracted 3.9 million visitors in the US compared with 72 million for MySpace and 32.9 million for Facebook.

SUP claims that the visitor data from Comscore Media Metrix underestimates LiveJournal's audience.

LiveJournal was set up in 1999 by 19-year-old Brad Fitzpatrick.

Six Apart bought the site almost three years ago, although Mr Fitzpatrick continued to work on it until he left earlier this year to work for the search engine Google.