Bradley Joseph Fitzpatrick (born February 5, 1980) is an American

programmer A programmer, computer programmer or coder is an author of computer source code someone with skill in computer programming. The professional titles Software development, ''software developer'' and Software engineering, ''software engineer' ...

. He is best known as the creator of

LiveJournal LiveJournal (), stylised as LiVEJOURNAL, is a Russian-owned social networking service where users can keep a blog, journal, or diary. American programmer Brad Fitzpatrick started LiveJournal on April 15, 1999, as a way of keeping his high school ...

and is the author of a variety of

free software Free software, libre software, libreware sometimes known as freedom-respecting software is computer software distributed open-source license, under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, distribut ...

projects such as

memcached Memcached (pronounced variously /mɛmkæʃˈdiː/ ''mem-cash-dee'' or /ˈmɛmkæʃt/ ''mem-cashed'') is a general-purpose distributed memory-caching system. It is often used to speed up dynamic database-driven websites by caching data and object ...

, PubSubHubbub,

OpenID OpenID is an open standard and decentralized authentication protocol promoted by the non-profit OpenID Foundation. It allows users to be authenticated by co-operating sites (known as relying parties, or RP) using a third-party identity provi ...

, and Perkeep.

Personal life

Born in

Iowa Iowa ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the upper Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. It borders the Mississippi River to the east and the Missouri River and Big Sioux River to the west; Wisconsin to the northeast, Ill ...

, Fitzpatrick grew up in

Beaverton, Oregon Beaverton is a city in the Tualatin Valley, located in Washington County in the U.S. state of Oregon, with a small portion bordering Portland. The city is among the main cities that make up the Portland metropolitan area. Its population was ...

, and majored in

computer science Computer science is the study of computation, information, and automation. Computer science spans Theoretical computer science, theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, and information theory) to Applied science, ...

at the

University of Washington The University of Washington (UW and informally U-Dub or U Dub) is a public research university in Seattle, Washington, United States. Founded in 1861, the University of Washington is one of the oldest universities on the West Coast of the Uni ...

Seattle Seattle ( ) is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Washington and in the Pacific Northwest region of North America. With a population of 780,995 in 2024, it is the 18th-most populous city in the United States. The city is the cou ...

. He started his first company, FreeVote.com, while in high school. Fitzpatrick is married to Kate Fitzpatrick. They have three children.

Career

LiveJournal grew out of a journaling program Fitzpatrick wrote for himself as a college freshman.LiveJournal: Brad Fitzpatrick
''BusinessWeek'' (August 14, 2006) Neva Chonin
LiveJournal grew out of one 18-year-old's frustration with Web journaling. Now Brad Fitzpatrick is on top of a blog revolution
''San Francisco Chronicle'' (September 27, 2005) It eventually became a full-time job and then a company; in January 2005 he sold it and its parent company, Danga Interactive, to

Six Apart Six Apart Ltd., sometimes abbreviated 6A, is a software company known for creating the Movable Type blogware, TypePad blog hosting service, and Vox (the blogging platform). The company also is the former owner of LiveJournal. Six Apart is ...

, for an undisclosed sum of cash and

stock Stocks (also capital stock, or sometimes interchangeably, shares) consist of all the Share (finance), shares by which ownership of a corporation or company is divided. A single share of the stock means fractional ownership of the corporatio ...

. He was named chief architect of

. He left Six Apart in August 2007, moving to

Google Google LLC (, ) is an American multinational corporation and technology company focusing on online advertising, search engine technology, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, consumer electronics, and artificial ...

, and in 2008, after the sale of LiveJournal to

SUP Media SUP (Russian: ''СУП'', which means 'soup') is an international online media company, founded in Moscow in mid-2006 by Andrew Paulson and Alexander Mamut. Its ownership is split between Mamut, Kommersant Publishing House and management. SUP' ...

, joined the LiveJournal Advisory Board. In June 2010 the board was dissolved, ending his involvement with LiveJournal. At Google he was a Staff Software Engineer and was part of the Go programming language team. In January 2020, Fitzpatrick announced he was leaving Google. Three days later he joined Tailscale as a late-stage co-founder.

Honors

In June 2014, the University of Washington School of Computer Science and Engineering gave Fitzpatrick an award for Early Career Achievement.UW CSE's Brad Fitzpatrick wins Diamond Award for Early Career Achievement
Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering, University of Washington (March 6, 2014)

References

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Fitzpatrick, Brad 1980 births Living people American male bloggers American bloggers Google employees People from Beaverton, Oregon University of Washington College of Engineering alumni Web developers American computer programmers People from Iowa Livejournal Aloha High School alumni