Whether it was Joi Ito or Barak, 6A certainly knows how to spend that VC money. Everyone is talking about it and it’s not even 9 AM yet here in PST zone. The purchase of LiveJournal is truly a remarkable thing.

I can think of ONE social networking investor/entrepreneur who is pissed he didn’t get the deal. He tried several times to contact Brad Fitzpatrick - but I guess he’s not Joi Ito.

Somewhere in this deal - this imaginary conversation happened:

BRAD: “So what are you gonna do with our end-users?”

Michael Sippey: “They’ll start using TyupePad - cause we’ll tell them to.”

BRAD: “Maybe they don’t WANT to use TypePad. It’s not LJ, it doesn’t have the social networking aspects and quite frankly - they’re HAPPY with LJ.”

BARAK: “Yes - but since we’ll own you, we can do whatever we want with your end-users.”

BRAD: “Well then fuck you - I’m not gonna do the deal.”

DAVID HORNIK: “Fine - then how ’bout $10M? How does that sound?”

BRAD: “Not enough! I want $20M.”

JOI: “Come on Brad, I’ll give you honorary status on my IRC channel - we’ll laud you everywhere you go and we’ll move you to San Francisco.”

BRAD: “what about my peeps? What’s gonna happen to them?”

MICHAEL SIPPEY: “We’ll put them into the back room - they’ll be happy programmers or else we’ll just dump them.”

BRAD: “OK make it $25M - but stash my money into an off-shore account and don’t let anyone know. I want to announce that we sold it for $3M. Shhhhhhhhh.”

or something like that.

This is truly an amazing deal.

Brad has been insular, narrow minded, not willing to listen to others or do any deals - and now this. Wow - talk about a turn around!

But he’s smart to grab the money now. I just don’t see how he has the power to change, move, manipulate or really offer up his end-user base. As noted in Techdirt - these folks aren’t inclined to pay.

Now Brad has dropped 100 balls on how to figure out how to “milk that tit” - so now let’s see if 6A (and Andrew Anker) are any smarter.

I bet they are.

Finally if you read what Om says (and believe it):

Live Journal has been in talks with several other possible acquirers, though Six Apart is more of a natural fit. My sources tell me that all Live Journal employees are going to be retained.

Then at least the LiveJournal employees are safe. Now the question is “what about the LJ end-users?”

Regardless there are a few things now clear:

- if you want to leak something - go to Om Mailk
- VC money works
- Andrew Anker has found the right place for himself - and his buddy David Hornik is the envy of the VC world
- and the power and aura of Joi Ito is confirmed.

Now I just wanna see what Micahel Sippey is all about. We still don’t have WYSIWYG editing in MT and my GOOD friend Anil is all promises, but no action on…..

Well I’ll just leave that blank and we’ll give Anil the benefit of the doubt. It looks like he’s (and the rest of 6A) have been busy.

But last I looked CEOs get the credit for deals like this - so my 25 year friend Barak Berkowitz (I first met him in NYC in 1980) gets the shout out “DUUUUUUUUUUUDE”.

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