Blogging and social networking company LiveJournal was sold to a Russian media company on Monday.

San Francisco-based company Six Apart sold the software to SUP, a one-year-old Russian online media company for an undisclosed sum of money, according to a statement. LiveJournal is a hosted blogging service that counts millions of users in the U.S. and around the world.

This is not the first time the companies have made a deal. In October 2006, SUP established a licensing agreement with Six Apart to offer LiveJournal in Russia. Though its biggest user base is the United States, LiveJournal has become exceedingly popular in Russia. According to Six Apart, Russian bloggers represent 28 percent of the software's 14 million users.

As part of the transaction, SUP will create an American management company, LiveJournal, Inc., to manage the social network's operations. A team to operate the company will be announced in the coming week. SUP will also set up an advisory board that includes Brad Fitzpatrick, LiveJournal's founder who now works for Google.

A number of consolidations of social-networking sites and products by media companies have been hugely popular ever since the News Corporation bought MySpace in 2005. The site was bought for $580 million and saw its value escalate as the site grew in popularity.

This year, Google grabbed YouTube for $1.65 billion. EBay bought StumbleUpon for $75 million while MySpace - already purchased by News Corp. for $580 million in 2005 - acquired PhotoBucket.

The most recent deal was Microsoft who paid $24O million for a 1.6 percent stake in Facebook.

LiveJournal, founded in 1999, is one of the oldest social-networking sites. The majority of the site's users are between 15 and 22 years of age and two-thirds are female.

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