sixapart cashes in on one of its assets:

The nearly three-year marriage is dissolving with Six Apart's sale of LiveJournal to Russia-based SUP a deal expected to be announced Monday. The financial terms aren't being disclosed.

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's global growth.

"We are very much a 'rest-of-the-world' company," said Andrew Paulson, SUP's chief executive. "We believe there are high growth opportunities outside North America."

Since SUP took over LiveJournal's licensing rights in Russia, the number of registered accounts in that country has nearly doubled to 1.35 million. About 523,000 Russian accounts are considered to be active bloggers, representing nearly a third of LiveJournal's roughly 1.7 million active users.

About nine Six Apart employees who worked on LiveJournal will move to the newly formed company. Six Apart will be left with about 150 workers worldwide.

Russia social networking sites are not known to fetch high valuations so it might have been a smart move to take the cash and concentrate on the MT software again - MT4 and MTCS seem like good products.

We are trying to get a hold of the SA sales folk for some time now - but no luck - seems too much business to do...