PRESS: Rambler & Co shifting LiveJournal to Russian jurisdiction

MOSCOW, Apr 4 (PRIME) -- Holding Rambler & Co has started shifting main functions of its blog platform LiveJournal into the Russian jurisdiction to cut down expenses tenfold, business daily Kommersant reported on Tuesday.

At the first stage, local SUP Media will get from the U.S.’ LiveJournal Inc. service administration and then payments will be also processed in Russia. SUP Media will raise advertising traffic and sell pay bundle offers.

Starting from Tuesday, LiveJournal is under the management of SUP Media in compliance with the strategy of concentrating assets in Russia and “a willing to be closer to users, whose majority resides in the Russian Federation and Europe.”

Pay services will be still provided by LiveJournal Inc., including additional options for accounts, virtual presents and so forth. It is a legal formality, which will be then also shifted to Russia, as Rambler & Co said.

LiveJournal’s servers were localized in the country in December 2016 to comply with the law, which obliges Internet companies to store personal data of Russians on the country’s territory.

Now, Rambler & Co will have to bear legal and technical expenses, including on new data centers and equipment, but spending on traffic servicing will hugely decrease.

LiveJournal Inc. has changed owners many times, but not the jurisdiction. It was owned by the U.S. firm Six Apart in 2005–2007 and then purchased by SUP Media, which serviced the Cyrillic segment of the blog platform. Russian businessman Alexander Mamut bought SUP Media in late 2012 and merged it with Afisha-Rambler, owned by ProfMedia of Russian tycoon Vladimir Potanin, into Afisha-Rambler-SUP with equal ownership.

As of the end of 2016, Mamut’s A&NN Investments was the sole owner of Rambler & Co after the purchase of Potanin’s stake for U.S. $295 million.

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