Six Apart acquires Rojo
Six Apart has acquired the startup Rojo, an RSS feed reader service. The press release is here.
Summary: Estimates put the purchase at about $5 million, which if so would be a poor turn out for the venture capital investors who put in $3.5 million into the company. It seems to be more an acquiring of personnel than technology, as the press release talks mostly about head employees being integrated into Six Apart's executive team. There's some talk from Barak Berkowitz about incorporating some elements of Rojo's technology into existing 6A lines (Vox, LJ, TypePad), but that might be a tricky feat--Rojo's written in Java and 6A does mostly Perl. Other people speculate this might be a build on the ad serving empire of Vox and LJ Plus accounts. In any case, although the Rojo service will continue, Six Apart intends to sell a majority interest in Rojo's newsreader services within a few months and doesn't really seem interested in developing Rojo further.
References I would TrackBack if LJ had TrackBacks:
Mashable.com: Rojo Acquired by Six Apart
Feedblog.org: Six Apart Acquires Rojo
Techcrunch.com: Six Apart Acquires Rojo
GigaOM: Six Apart Buys Rojo
Niall Kennedy: Six Apart Acquires Rojo Networks
What happened to Rojo's mojo?
Six Apart buys Chris Alden. (Oh yeah, and Rojo.)
Summary: Estimates put the purchase at about $5 million, which if so would be a poor turn out for the venture capital investors who put in $3.5 million into the company. It seems to be more an acquiring of personnel than technology, as the press release talks mostly about head employees being integrated into Six Apart's executive team. There's some talk from Barak Berkowitz about incorporating some elements of Rojo's technology into existing 6A lines (Vox, LJ, TypePad), but that might be a tricky feat--Rojo's written in Java and 6A does mostly Perl. Other people speculate this might be a build on the ad serving empire of Vox and LJ Plus accounts. In any case, although the Rojo service will continue, Six Apart intends to sell a majority interest in Rojo's newsreader services within a few months and doesn't really seem interested in developing Rojo further.
References I would TrackBack if LJ had TrackBacks:
Mashable.com: Rojo Acquired by Six Apart
Feedblog.org: Six Apart Acquires Rojo
Techcrunch.com: Six Apart Acquires Rojo
GigaOM: Six Apart Buys Rojo
Niall Kennedy: Six Apart Acquires Rojo Networks
What happened to Rojo's mojo?
Six Apart buys Chris Alden. (Oh yeah, and Rojo.)