LiveJournal, the pioneering online journal-writing/blogging service which was bought by MovableType parent company SixApart almost three years ago, is now being sold off to Russian online media company SUP. The terms were not disclosed. LiveJournal’s history here, on Wikipedia.

SUP, which already been running LiveJournal in Russia as part of a licensing agreement, plans to set up a new company in San Francisco to steer LiveJournal here and elsewhere, reports AP. Nine SA employees who worked on LJ will move to the newly formed company. Six Apart will be left with about 150 workers worldwide. More in the release and FAQs here.

LJ has seen its core audience move to other social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook, and others, as it failed to add more features on top of the core. SUP has plans to revive and invest between $10m-$100m, and will have an advisory board consisting of industry experts and members of the LiveJournal community, including Brad Fitzpatrick, the founder of LiveJournal who is now at Google.

Meanwhile, SixApart has gone through its own set of missed opportunities and changes, and appointed Chris Alden as new CEO in Sept. It has been rumored as an acquisition candidate for a while, and with the disposal of this consumer service, being bought by an enterprise/CMS player might make more sense (even though it stil has the consumer services TypePad and Vox).

Updated: BW: “I think the world of LiveJournal, but we felt like we needed to figure out our focus,” Alden says. “It’s all about (Six Apart) growing up.”

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