Six Apart lays off 16-plus employees

Chris Alden, CEO of blog-software maker Six Apart, understands his business so well that he posted his own internal memo before any pesky gossip bloggers could extract it from his loquacious employees. He's also sensible enough to admit that there's more to blame for the layoffs than the economy — like the integration of recent acquisitions. He also snuck in a well-disguised hint that the company is cash-flow positive. Well played, Chris! The company is laying off 8 percent of its 200-plus workforce, and shifting more resources into its services business. Cofounder Ben Trott is taking a bigger role running Six Apart's blog-hosting business. Alden and other top managers are taking a 15 percent paycut. The only disappointment: That the company didn't kill off Vox, its interminably boring free personal blogging service.

What to use instead of Evite (and five other popular but terrible websites)

Oh god, Evite. It starts with an email about a party with no information about that party, and then it gets worse. But in many cases there's no reason you have to use the most popular site. Here's what to use instead of Evite, YouTube, Blogger, Twitter, Digg, and MapQuest. More »

Six Apart considered a LiveJournal and Vox spinoff

We just heard an outlandish rumor: That San Francisco-based blogging company Six Apart, whose software powers many of the world's most popular blogs, considered splitting in two earlier this year, under former CEO Barak Berkowitz. But the company recently upgraded its CEO, replacing Berkowitz with executive Chris Alden, and a spinoff or sale is no longer on the table. By shedding its LiveJournal and Vox consumer blogging sites, Six Apart would have left behind enterprise blog service TypePad and the Movable Type software product — exactly the businesses new CEO Chris Alden ran before his promotion, which is likely why this old rumor is gaining fresh circulation. More »

Six Apart's Brad boy is Googling a new idea

A Valleywag spy reports sighting Brad Fitzpatrick, the creator of LiveJournal and outgoing Six Apart executive, at Philz Coffee in San Francisco. Fitzpatrick was there with book publisher and geek icon Tim O'Reilly and David Recordon, a former Six Apart engineer who left to join VeriSign last year. The three were working on a presentation on "social network portability." Now, that's no surprise — Fitzpatrick has been openly interested in the idea of swapping personal information between websites for a while, and he and Recordon — who we hear, by the way, may be rejoining Six Apart — helped create the OpenID standard, which helps accomplish just that. No, what makes this geek sighting fascinating is that Fitzpatrick, we hear — though neither he nor Google has confirmed this — is headed to Google. And Google has been trying to get back in the social-network game. More »

Remainders: It doesn't help that the ads sell something called "iLoad"

• New York-based e-mail startup Daily Candy gets a sweet deal: an investment valuing the company at $130 mil, which lets the company take down its "For Sale" sign and get back to the important business of making urban women feel inadequately shoed. [Gawker, link being fixed]
• So some big-city bloggers had a party for Six Apart's new Vox blogging service, right? And some guys sat in a hot tub on the roof? And probably someone called this the bubble? Hon, it's not a bubble until what's in the hot tub can get you drunk. Anyway, click through for topless shots of Gawker Media managing editor Lockhart Steele. [Teen Drama]
• Damn it, Gawker's stealing all the tech news today. As our catty sister notes, the New York Times is proud to name-drop Dodgeball.com founder Dennis Crowley, the man responsible for every New Yorker and San Franciscan constantly updating their friends on how drunk they're about to get. [Gawker]
• Pictured: The Times also uses a photo illustration to remind everyone of those wild days of free drink coasters for all. [NYT]
• Mooching off the "Get a Mac" commercials: You can make a clever parody or a creepy knock-off ad. (Please make the parody.) [iLoad]