Maggie Fox and Geoff Livingston announced this week that the planned merger of their two companies, Toronto’s Social Media Group and Washington DC’s Livingston Communications, has been called off. They both cite fundamental differences in both culture and management style as the reasons for the canceled merge, in blog posts getting widespread praise from the blogosphere for their honesty and transparency.

From Fox’s post:

“There was a lot of excitement around news of the prospective merger, and there will likely be a lot more around the fact that it isn’t happening. We could have quietly avoided the fallout of the decision not to proceed with the partnership and ridden the early publicity, but we both figure it’s better to do the right thing for our businesses, be transparent about it, and move on.”