Meckler writes," The JPM team liked the Internet when it was hot, but did not like it very much when the Net was not. Of course that is why they play with money other than their own. They chickened out and ran to try to make themselves look good with their clients."

He points out that in 2000 that he predicted that large media companies would be spending most of their business development time purchasing vertical or specialized Web sites. For examples Meckler cites Dow Jones buying MarketWatch.com and The New York Times buying About.com

Meckler also points out that TechTracker.com was recently purchased by Cnet for what is believed to be around $15 million.  He writes, "Internet.com Venture Funds was once one of the larger investors in TechTracker. When the JPM team pulled our funding we lost an opportunity to buy more of TechTracker at a discount to our original investment. Then JPM turned around and sold their interest in TechTracker (and several other Internet.com VC portfolio companies) to a buyer of ‘distressed’ assets for pennies on the dollar."

He goes on to write," There are more one-time Internet.com VC portfolio companies that are now very profitable and getting ready to be sold. The JPM private client group really knows how to run money!"

This means that internet.com would again go private with new owner Alan Meckler. This is similar to Alan Meckler’s 1998 deal that sold Mecklermedia (and its Internet World tradeshow) to Penton Media with Alan buying back  the websites which included internet.com. In 1999 internet.com went public and after the acquisition of Jupiter Research the company changed its name to Jupitermedia.

A Reuters article confirms the acquisition rumors, "Getty spokeswoman Deb Trevino confirmed that the companies are in talks. They are required to make a statement, given the move in their stock yesterday," she said. "What they put out tells the story. I don’t see any need to comment further."

The reported offer for Jupitermedia is $9.60 a share. The buyback price wasn’t revealed but "Alan Meckler has indicated he is willing to acquire those assets at a price that Getty has indicated is acceptable".

Over the last few years Jupitermedia has become a major player in online imaging by acquiring more than 25 online subscription image sites including Comstock and Photos.com.

According to the article, "…it is unclear how much Getty is willing to pay for Jupitermedia, but sources close to the deal said the image company could fetch more than $11 a share, or more than $450 including debt".  That amounts to a $165 million premium over Jupitermedia’s market cap on Nasdaq. Getty may feel this is still a bargain since Jupitermedia’s 52 week high trading price was $18.81 per share.

Jupitermedia CEO Alan Meckler recently announced a major shift for his company back into the tradeshow and online content business. Could selling his Jupiterimages division be part of that strategy? It seems more likely than a sell of the entire company which would put Getty Images in the online publishing and tradeshow business.

According to Technorati, Om’s Gigom blog is the 85th largest in the world. You know this is becoming a trend when ABC News asks “Should you quit your day job to blog?”

Om has used his blog over the past several years to break some stories that were huge for the blogosphere, but not quite big enough for the mainstream press at the time. Now he is doing something (going solo) that many journalists dream about, but with a couple of major caveats.

First, he’s staying on as a contributing editor, writing a monthly column for Business 2.0 that will start in September. Second, he’s taken seed funding, according to Valleywag. This means he can’t just be the run of the mill freelancer/lone gun.

If I were Om, I would try to leverage his great brand he has built by turning it into a micro media franchise that includes international sites, events and proprietary research. It’s the model that Alan Meckler perfected during the 1990s and TechCrunch continues today. TechCrunch may not sell research now, but watch for them to do so. It’s the path many media companies take. Now, however, the investment required is minimal.

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Steve Rubel is a PR strategist with nearly 16 years of public relations, marketing, journalism and communications experience. He currently serves as a Senior Vice President with Edelman, the largest independent global PR firm.

He authors the Micro Persuasion weblog, which tracks how blogs and participatory journalism are changing the public relations practice.

Meckler says…”few people if any will ever make money from writing a blog.”

Calacanis says…If folks focus in on a niche and own it there is a good chance they could make half a living from blogging.”

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Andy Beal is an internet marketing consultant and considered one of the world’s most respected and interactive search engine marketing experts. Andy has worked with many Fortune 1000 companies such as Motorola, CitiFinancial, Lowes, Alaska Air, DeWALT, NBC and Experian.

You can read his internet marketing blog at Marketing Pilgrim and reach him at andy.beal@gmail.com.

Now that both companies have been sold, Danny Sullivan speaks-up and offers his candid thoughts. Turns out, the whole thing was a charade…

If SES and SEW were feeding off of JupiterResearch, I certainly never felt it. I like the people at JupiterResearch, both those that are still left and those recently departed. But we had no real synergy between the two. We did our own things and coordinated nothing. JupiterResearch would have banners at our shows, and in the last year, I’d give them a track on the first day, but I never got the impression we were somehow thriving because of that track.

Ouch!

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Andy Beal is an internet marketing consultant and considered one of the world’s most respected and interactive search engine marketing experts. Andy has worked with many Fortune 1000 companies such as Motorola, CitiFinancial, Lowes, Alaska Air, DeWALT, NBC and Experian.

You can read his internet marketing blog at Marketing Pilgrim and reach him at andy.beal@gmail.com.

Read the USA Today Story…

Often the most interesting corporate blogs are the ones that are written by the rank and file. They come from the passionate “gut” of the company, not necessarily from the top.

PR instinct tells us to have the executives – and only the execs – speak for the firm. But blogs break down these walls. We can now hear from everyone inside the heart of a corporation – if the company is willing to let them speak. I trust companies that are willing to do this. Sometimes it’s the CEO, often times it isn’t. Heck, customers could be the gut of your company.

When we buy we’re not just buying from a bunch of executives. We’re buying products and services produced by people at the gut. Let the people – the gut of your company – speak and convince us why we should buy. I am more likely to buy from Dell because of what Sam Decker writes on his blog than I did if Michael Dell wrote one. The reason is, I know Sam’s blogging from the gut. With CEOs you can never tell. Entrepreneurs usually make good bloggers because they blog from the gut. Would Michael be a gut-blogger? One hopes.

The maverick CEOs – Mark Cuban, Bob Liodice, Alan Meckler and Bob Lutz – they all blog from the gut. They’re naturals. Not every exec is a natural, but there’s always someone in the rank in file who is. The moral of the story is, find someone who will blog from the gut whether they are at the top of the corporate food chain or the bottom.

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Steve Rubel is a PR strategist with nearly 16 years of public relations, marketing, journalism and communications experience. He currently serves as a Senior Vice President with Edelman, the largest independent global PR firm.

He authors the Micro Persuasion weblog, which tracks how blogs and participatory journalism are changing the public relations practice.

Blogs Mean Business

Blogs are here to stay. At least, that’s the growing consensus. How can blogs help you promote your thoughts or business? Share your reactions and insights at WebProWorld.

Blogging as Easy as 1, 2, 3

Thinking about blogging? Here’s a new site that makes this all as easy as 1, 2, 3 – it’s called Ready, Set, Blog and it’s from Mindsay, a blogging platform. They even have a blog on blogging.

JupiterResearch Blogs Reap Business

Jupitermedia CEO Alan Meckler writes that since the company’s analysts started writing blogs two years ago, they have had gained several sales leads as because readers have been impressed by the analysts’ comments.

Bloglines’ Rapid Growth Gives It Great Power

Using publicly available data from Bloglines, Infoworld’s John Udell analyzed the subscription trends of several major tech blogs (see chart at left). Udell says he’s really not sure how to interpret this because the data suggests that while growth is constant, the rate of growth varies episodically. Despite the nuances, here’s what I clearly gleaned – more folks are subscribing to blogs via RSS and they’re reading them on Bloglines.

As of this writing, more than one third of my 1200 FeedBurner feed readers (420 subscribers) are viewing my blog through Bloglines (see chart at right) – and this number is growing rapidly. As much as I would love to think this ascent is due to what I write on my blog, I actually believe it is because Bloglines is attracting users in droves and is growing like a beanstalk. I have heard from some subscribers that they are ditching their desktop RSS readersFb_1 in favor of Bloglines’ simplicity. As much as I love FeedDemon, I too have switched exclusively to Bloglines.

However, with great growth often comes great power. Could Bloglines one day exert the kind of control that Google does? I bet in the near future they might. Especially if they need start monetizing their users or they get swallowed up by a bigger fish.

Frank Bajak to Big Media – Ignore Blogs at Your Peril

AP tech editor Frank Bajak: The sovereignty of Big Journalism is eroding.

Blogs Come of Age as a News Source

SF Chronicle: Weblogs come of age as a news source (via IWantMedia)

Steve Rubel is a PR strategist with nearly 16 years of public relations, marketing, journalism and communications experience. He currently serves as a Senior Vice President with Edelman, the largest independent global PR firm.

He authors the Micro Persuasion weblog, which tracks how blogs and participatory journalism are changing the public relations practice.

… they have had gained several sales leads as because readers have been impressed by the analysts’ comments.

From the Jupitermedia CEO Alan Meckler blog:

“Our JupiterResearch team has been writing blogs for close to two years (JupiterResearch was the first Research company to offer blogs). Readership has grown dynamically (Close to 70,000 page views per day).

And we now have several cases of gaining sales leads as a result of a reader becoming interested in our research because of being impressed by analysts’ comments.”

Steve Rubel is a PR strategist with nearly 16 years of public relations, marketing, journalism and communications experience. He currently serves as a Senior Vice President with Edelman, the largest independent global PR firm.

He authors the Micro Persuasion weblog, which tracks how blogs and participatory journalism are changing the public relations practice.

He states that speaking slots and exhibit space are available. Alan Meckler is the CEO and founder of Jupitermedia Corporation which owns Search Engine Watch and SES conferences. The conferences themselves are run by Danny Sullivan who also runs a Jupitermedia site on the search industry called Search Engine Watch.

Discuss the conference at the WebProWorld eBusiness Forum.

The Search Engine Strategies Conference is the most popular event focuing on the search engine industry and search engine optimization. Below is a list of current SES conferences scheduled:

October 27 – 28, 2004 Stockholm, Sweden
December 13 – 16, 2004 Chicago, IL
Feb 28 – March 3, 2005 New York, NY
March 22 – 23, 2005 Tokyo, Japan
April 12 – 13, 2005 Munich, Germany
May 3 – 5, 2005 Toronto, Canada
June 1 – 2, 2005 London, England
August 8 – 11, 2005 San Jose, CA

China will mark the seventh country hosting an SES Conference. They are planning the China conference for June 2005.

Interestingly, AD:TECH also recently announced that they will hold their first China conference in November 2005. The Shanghai event, to be held November 15-17, 2005, is organized Infoex-World Services Ltd., a leading producer of events in China, and exclusive licensee of AD:TECH in Greater China and Southeast Asia.

Editor’s Note: Alan Meckler’s blog was started earlier this year and is an interesting read. He writes with obvious insider knowledge about Jupitermeda plans and includes unique perspective on eBusiness trends.

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