Jupitermedia Announces Sale Of Its Jupiter Research Division: Financial News – Yahoo! Finance “
“The sale of JupiterResearch closes an exciting and successful chapter for Jupitermedia. During our nearly four years of ownership, we were able to revitalize this important business through the combined efforts of the JupiterResearch team and our operating acumen,” stated Alan M. Meckler, Chairman and CEO of Jupitermedia Corporation. “The sale of the JupiterResearch business is further evidence of Jupitermedia’s strategy to be primarily focused on our rapidly growing digital asset collections. The funds received will continue to strengthen our balance sheet and allow us to have greater buying power for more acquisitions for our Jupiterimages division,” added Meckler.”
JupiterResearch was sold to Kagan Research LLC and will become JupiterKagen Inc. JupiterResearch Analyst David Schatsky will be President of the new concern with Kagan while Tim Baskerville, Kagan’s former President will be CEO. Schatsky posts on the change here.
Back over at Jupitermedia, expect, as quoted, Alan Meckler to continue to lead a team that aggressively builds out a huge image business. This merger is probably a really good thing for that. Meckler had seemed to be focusing more and more of his company’s attention on the stock photography business anyways and this is where the focus of the company seemed to be headed. By spinning off the research arm this will allow the company to focus even more precisely on this lucrative market.
With micropayment stock sites popping up and threatening the dominance owned by Getty and Corbis for so long, as well as many new and exciting companies popping up to fill a void in the royalty free market, Jupiterimages has been innovatively expanding in this evolving marketplace. While expanding they have also been assembling one of the largest libraries of images in the world. My guess is that although JupiterResearch is a fine business (and was a great investment having bought it for only $250,000 and sold it for over $10 million) that Meckler and team see more upside potential ultimately in the disruption that is presently taking place in the stock and image world. Very interesting indeed.
Meckler hasn’t posted on the change yet, but watch his blog for more of what this might mean for Jupiterimages.
Update: More from Meckler on his blog.