Shellen will also serve as the director of product development for SUP, LiveJournal, Inc.’s parent company, overseeing the pipeline of new products that SUP is producing in other markets around the world.

He will be based in San Francisco at LiveJournal, Inc.’s new offices which will be opening in the New Year. Shellen will be joined by a new general manager for LiveJournal, Inc., whom SUP is in the process of recruiting. He will be a member of SUP's executive committee and report to Andrew Paulson, SUP's CEO.

“I am very proud that Jason is the first new recruit at LiveJournal, Inc. His experience at Blogger and Google in developing genre-defining products will be invaluable to the future of LiveJournal,” said Andrew Paulson. “We believe that LJ is above all a transparent platform for communities and for real content online. Jason shares this vision and he will fit perfectly into our international team.”

Shellen brings a wealth of experience to his new role, having previously worked for Google’s New Business Development team. During his time at Google he was the founding product manager for Google Reader, one of the most popular blog readers available online. He also managed business and product strategy for Pyra Labs, creators of Blogger.

"I'm excited to join such a diverse and talented international team. LiveJournal has a rich heritage in the U.S. and beyond and I look forward to improving and bringing new products to this community,” said Shellen. “The LiveJournal team is going to grow in 2008 and I hope to recruit additional creative people to help build fun, useful and exciting products."

Shellen earned his B.A. from Saint Mary's College of California and is on the board of the New Progressive Coalition, LLC as well as the RSS Advisory Board, and Dev HD.

His blog can be found at shellen.com.

About LiveJournal Inc.

LiveJournal was one of the world’s first social networks and blogging platforms. Since its launch in the U.S. in 1999 it has registered 14.3 million accounts. The site allows users to set up their own virtual diary and communicate with their friends by posting and receiving comments on each other’s entries. In many countries the site’s most popular functionality is the community aspect which allows users to engage each other on issues of common interest. LiveJournal has a worldwide monthly audience of 18.7 million of whom 5.2 million (Omniture) are Russian based. The number of active accounts totals 1.7 million worldwide and 523,000 in Russia (LJ internal stats).

About SUP

SUP is an international online media company with established partnerships with businesses across the globe. It was founded in the summer of 2006 by an international management team with Russian seed capital. SUP set itself the goal of building a portfolio of high-traffic-generating projects based in Moscow from which to expand worldwide. These include LiveJournal.ru, Championat.ru, +SOL, and Victory S.A.