So Om Malik has posted a report that Om Malik on Broadband » Six Apart is going to buy Live Journal, and the whole blogosphere is afire with the news. What gets me is that I don’t really see the point – if 6A gobbles up the LJ community, the only major advantage I can see would be to use it as a source of revenues, but if they impose stricter pricing or whatever, the backlash could be huge.
On the upside, I would let loose a long, loud, evil cackle if my LJ friends (Aaron, Nick, Aurelia, Ariel, Ryan, SarahScott, Megan, Evangeline, Carol and Judy) are all suddenly brought kicking and screaming into the Movable Type empire. Now, I rather doubt that a 6A/LJ merger would involve LJ suddenly using a TypePad backend, but it’s certainly possible.
A better question is, what functionality would this bring to Movable Type / TypePad? Communities? A slightly smoother and more spam-free commenting system (sorry, Jay)? At the moment I’m admittedly at a loss.