LiveJournal is a blog platform that has over 5 million accounts. Brad Fitzpatrick, the founder of LiveJournal, is currently the Chief Architect of Six Apart — which is the company that owns LiveJournal, Vox, Movable Type, and TypePad. Wikipedia has an in-depth history of Six Apart.
Fitzpatrick helped LiveJournal scale its rapid user growth. And Fitzpatrick is credited for leading the development of Memcached, a distributed cache system widely used by social networks and blogs today. Facebook also uses Memcached for scaling its large user base as well.
Another rumor is that both Facebook and MySpace are trying to court Fitzpatrick as well. Why would Fitzpatrick leave? Rumor has it that Fitzpatrick is simply bored. And apparently, Six Apart’s management has been having some tension at the company:
“The company has been divided into two departments. One is engaged in selling blogs and different software to large companies, while the other supervises Live Journal and Vox social networks. According to Western analysts, the mentioned departments are difficult to get along within one company, while the management presented by the Barak Berkowitz, the Acting Director, Mena Trott, President and Founder, and Andrew Anker, Head of Business Department, simply do not cope with their duties and are not able to withdraw Six Apart out of a prolonged crises.”
[Source: Gawker’s Valleywag]
