Six Apart Acquires Rojo

Posted on September 6, 2006

Liz Gannes at GigaOM reports that Six Apart has purchased Rojo, a web-based feed reader. Six Apart has not made the announcement yet but they soon will according to the GigaOM story. The article says Six Apart will use some of Rojo's code in their blogging products. Rojo CEO Chris Alden will transfer to Six Apart and run the Movable Type group. Niall Kennedy, a feed syndication geek in San Francisco, explains how the Rojo purchase could benefit Six Apart.

The acquisition gives Six Apart both a feed reader and feed search engine. Rojo will help generate more pageviews, allowing Six Apart to further leverage its newly created advertising network covering LiveJournal Plus accounts and Vox. Six Apart may bundle the Rojo service with its licensed personal blogging service currently powered by TypePad. Six Apart currently licenses TypePad software to companies around the world such as Le Monde in France and Nifty in Japan. Rojo's software could be bundled into these licensing deals or command a higher licensing value for Vox when it is launched and ready for redistribution.

Six Apart continues to make efforts to strengthen Vox, its free blogging and social networking service. To join Vox you need to first request an invite. Looking at Vox's numbers the site contains 4,262 pages of posts; 5,465 pages of photos and 1,360 pages of videos. To keep up with Vox you can read the Team Vox Blog. You can also read VoxTrott, the blog of Six Apart co-founder Mena Trott.

Note: Rojo is no longer active.