Six Apartment

About Six Apartment

Six Apart stands as a foundational entity in the evolution of digital publishing, primarily recognized for developing one of the earliest and most influential blog publishing systems, Movable Type. The company was originally founded in San Francisco in 2001 by the husband-and-wife team of Benjamin and Mena Trott. The genesis of the company stemmed from a personal project; Benjamin, during a period of unemployment, developed the software that would become Movable Type to make it easier for Mena to write her weblog. The name "Six Apart" is a nod to the six-day difference in their birth dates.

The initial release of Movable Type in October 2001 was met with immediate interest, signaling the dawn of the blogging boom. The company's trajectory involved several strategic shifts and acquisitions. It acquired the French weblog company, Ublog, and launched the hosted weblog service TypePad in 2003. It also briefly owned other platforms like LiveJournal and Vox. A significant change in the licensing terms for Movable Type in 2004 caused some users to migrate to emerging open-source alternatives like WordPress. Over the years, Six Apart has navigated the dynamic web landscape by offering both proprietary and, for a period, open-source versions of its software.

In 2011, a pivotal restructuring occurred when the Japanese IT company Infocom acquired Six Apart's Japanese subsidiary (founded in 2003) and all rights to the Movable Type platform and the Six Apart brand. This shifted the company's center of gravity to Japan. A further evolution took place in 2016 when the company became independent through an Employee Buyout (EBO), with the management and employees acquiring 100% of the shares. Since this transition, the company has operated with a full remote work policy.

Today, Six Apart, Ltd. is a Japanese software company headquartered in Tokyo. Its core business remains the development and provision of its Content Management System (CMS), Movable Type, which serves a wide array of clients from individuals and educational institutions to large corporations and government agencies. Revenue is generated through the sale of software licenses for Movable Type, including professional and enterprise versions, and through subscription-based access to its SaaS offerings like MovableType.net and the business blog service, Lekumo. The company also has a network of around 300 partner companies that provide solutions and services based on its products.

Movable Type is a powerful publishing platform that allows users to manage multiple weblogs and content pages, offering features like user role management, template customization, and both static and dynamic page generation. It is particularly dominant in the Japanese market for commercial packaged CMS, holding a significant market share for ten consecutive years. The platform is known for its flexibility, security, and scalability, powering tens of thousands of websites in Japan, including those for major corporations.