Gawker: valleywag, andrew anker

A is for Adelson, who cofounded Digg

Owen Thomas — Wed, 07 May 2008 19:40:00 EDT

Digg cofounder Jay Adelson is now asked by the likes of Kara Swisher how he'd fix big media companies, as in this clip. But there was a time when he barely knew what to do with his own Internet startup, Equinix. That tale and more covers 54 out of 294 pages in Once You're Lucky, Twice You're Good, Sarah Lacy's soon-to-be-released book about Web 2.0. The first page of the book's index, one of many to come:

For LiveJournal, Six Aparting is such sweet sorrow

Owen Thomas — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 23:01:03 EST

Users of LiveJournal call it "defriending." As terrible as it sounds, defriending's not really that bad; it just means you're bored with someone and don't want to hear about their issues anymore. Or share yours with them. That, in essence, is what Six Apart, the San Francisco-based blog-software company, has decided to do with LiveJournal, the online community it acquired from Brad Fitzpatrick in 2005. Andrew Anker, Six Apart's vice president of ~~chopping the company into little bits for convenient and lucrative disposition~~ corporate development, orchestrated the sale of LiveJournal to Sup, a Russian media company which already runs a localized version of the site. With the sale, Anker and the rest of Six Apart's team are letting LiveJournal know, as gently as they can, that they're just not interested in its problems.

Anker, LiveJournal founder Fitzpatrick, Sup CEO Andrew Paulson and some of his Russian engineers, a passel of Six Aparters, and one slightly bewildered goat held a bash at 111 Minna to celebrate the split. Also there: Fitzpatrick's omnipresent ex, Pownce engineer Leah Culver. Culver was in good spirits, though, despite the rumor Fitzpatrick's seeing someone in Russia. She too has a new beau, Justin.tv's Kyle Vogt. We're just waiting for the inevitable Leahcast.

Culver wasn't the only camera-friendly type there. Natali Del Conte, CNET's newly hired TV personality, stole the spotlight with a sparkling appearance just as I was leaving 111 Minna.

LiveJournal creator leaves as Six Apart fails to spin

Owen Thomas — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 11:25:59 EDT

Word is that Brad Fitzpatrick, the founder of LiveJournal and chief architect of Six Apart, is leaving the troubled blog-software company. And the fact that you're hearing about from a gossip blog rather than the transparency-loving company is itself a sign of how deep the problems run. Fitzpatrick, who sold his company, Danga Interactive, to Six Apart two years ago, has vested his shares, declared his boredom with Six Apart, and after weighing offers from Google and Facebook, has chosen to head to Google, a source close to Fitzpatrick says. The only reason that Six Apart management hasn't announced it, the source adds, is that they can't figure out how to spin it. Here, let me help, guys! It's bad. And Fitzpatrick's departure is just the tip of Six Apart's reality-denying iceberg.

Six Apart is in two separate businesses — selling blog software and services to big companies, and managing social networks LiveJournal and Vox. The two don't mesh well, and it shows. CEO Barak Berkowitz's corporate-running-dog background has not prepared him at all for dealing with feisty online users, and his ineptness was on display in the recent fan-fiction censorship scandal.

Mena Trott, Six Apart's president and cofounder, is normally the company's most effective spokesperson. When she can be prevented from swearing, that is. But we haven't seen much from her recently.

And Andrew Anker is still listed as being in charge of the company's consumer business on its website. But I know that he's moved into a corporate-development role — which I think is Silicon Valley code for "trying to find someone to buy the company."

On top of that, there's last month's 365 Main outage, which knocked the company's sites offline — not Six Apart's fault, except in that it didn't bother to get a backup data center, as most high-traffic websites do. And the rushed release of Movable Type 4.0, the company's cash-cow blog software line.

Not that Six Apart's problems, copious as they are, and difficult as they are to fess up to, are much of a reason for Fitzpatrick to stay. Teaching Berkowitz how not to sound like a n00b when talking to LiveJournal members? Likely impossible. Fixing Movable Type's bugs? Booooring. Listening to Trott's swearing fits? Exciting, from a distance.

As Fitzpatrick put it himself in late June:

In the short term, I'm going to see what's possible here, but this boredom can't go on much longer before I snap. I need to be in a team of excited, fast-moving people stressing the fuck out (in a fun way) on challenging and important problems. I miss that.

The damning implication, of course, being that Six Apart lacks both excited, fast-moving people and challenging and important problems. No wonder Fitzpatrick is leaving.

Assuming his plan to join Google proceeds as planned, Fitzpatrick's likely to become both a respected engineer and an effective liaison to open-source developers. Google has, despite its efforts, a mixed reputation in the open-source world. Fitzpatrick, by contrast, is almost universally beloved by geeks for releasing the open-source components that make LiveJournal run. When he reveals that he wrote memcached, they squeal about as readily as 14-year-old girls do when they learn he's the creator of LiveJournal. Google has considerably more code for Fitzpatrick to play with — and a bigger stage for him to play on.

And for Six Apart? Expect more drama, nonstop, and less-than-transparent explanations of it from company management. Fitzpatrick did this favor for them, at least: Six Aparters can always whine about it to their friends on LiveJournal.