Mecklermedia (formerly Internet.com LLC, Jupitermedia Inc., Mediabistro Inc. and WebMediaBrands Corporation) was a

U.S. The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...

-based corporation. The original WebMediaBrands was established in 1994, and headquartered in New York. Founded by Alan M. Meckler and

Tristan Louis Tristan Louis (born February 28, 1971) is a French-born American author, entrepreneur and internet activist. Early work Louis was born in Digne-les-Bains, Alpes-de-Haute-Provence. In 1994 and 1995, as publisher of iWorld, part of the Mecklermedi ...

, the company provides

business-to-business Business-to-business (B2B or, in some countries, BtoB) is a situation where one business makes a commercial transaction with another. This typically occurs when: * A business is sourcing materials for their production process for output (e.g., a ...

(B2B) services for creative, business and information technology professionals, including recruitment and event promotion. Until 2014, the company also operated a group of websites aimed towards the B2B market—particularly

blog A blog (a truncation of "weblog") is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts). Posts are typically displayed in reverse chronological order ...

s covering various aspects of the media industry. In August 2014, Mediabistro sold its editorial properties to

Prometheus Global Media Prometheus Global Media was a New York City-based B2B media company. The company was formed in December 2009, when Nielsen Company sold its entertainment and media division to a private equity-backed group led by Pluribus Capital Management and ...

, a subsidiary of

Guggenheim Partners Guggenheim Partners is a global investment and advisory financial services firm that engages in investment banking, asset management, capital markets services, and insurance services. Organization The firm is headquartered in New York City ...

, for $8 million. The company announced it would liquidate itself on December 22, 2015

History

In 1994, Alan Meckler, then CEO of Mecklermedia, created MecklerWeb as an addendum to his offerings in print (''Virtual Reality World'', ''CDrom World'', and ''Internet World'') and conferences (Internet World, Virtual Reality World). In 1995, as advertising-supported publishing emerged as a viable business model on the Web, the Website was relaunched by

under the name iWorld and began to publish content for the nascent Internet industry. As the Internet World conference prospered, iWorld set out on a strategy of acquiring successful Websites that were focused on technology content, such as Webopedia, SearchEngineWatch and WebReference. In 1997, the online division was renamed internet.com, after acquiring rights to the domain name from The Internet Company. In 1998, Mecklermedia Corp. was acquired by

Penton Media Penton was an information services and marketing company. The company's three largest revenue streams came from events, digital and marketing services. Although Penton had a long history (see below) as a trade publisher, in 2015 it reported that ...

and the online assets were spun off into a separate company called Internet.com LLC. Internet.com went public on the NASDAQ in the second half of 1999 (trading as INTM). In 1999, internet.com Corp. launched the Search Engine Strategies conference and in 2000, it acquired Earthweb and incorporated it into the JupiterWeb network. In 2002, the company purchased the Jupiter Research business from Jupiter Media Metrix and renamed itself from INT Media to Jupitermedia, with a new stock ticker symbol JUPM. In 2004, the company started acquiring image assets and developed Jupiterimages as a separate

stock photography Stock photography is the supply of photographs which are often licensed for specific uses. The stock photo industry, which began to gain hold in the 1920s, has established models including traditional macrostock photography, midstock photography, ...

division, which operated two online image libraries, stock.xchng, a library of free-to-use photographs and illustrations, and

StockXpert stock.xchng (also known as SXC) was a website providing free-to use stock photography and illustrations, its name being a reduced version of "stock exchange" (meaning the exchange of stock photography, and a play on the term stock exchange). Th ...

, a low-cost

Microstock photography Microstock photography, also known as micropayment photography, is a part of the stock photography industry. What defines a company as a microstock photography company is that they (1) source their images almost exclusively via the Internet, (2) d ...

site. In 2005, Jupitermedia sold SearchEngineWatch to Incisive Media. In 2006, Jupitermedia sold its JupiterResearch division to MCG Capital Corporation. In 2007, the company operates as two divisions, JupiterImages and Jupiter Online Media. In 2008, JupiterResearch was acquired by

Forrester Research Forrester is a research and advisory company that offers a variety of services including research, consulting, and events. Forrester has nine North America locations: Cambridge, Massachusetts; New York, New York; San Francisco, California; McL ...

. In October 2008, Jupitermedia announced that they would be selling their online images division, Jupiterimages, to the stock photography agency

Getty Images Getty Images Holdings, Inc. is an American visual media company and is a supplier of stock images, editorial photography, video and music for business and consumers, with a library of over 477 million assets. It targets three markets— creative ...

for $96 million in cash. The sale went ahead in February 2009; Jupiterimages (including the sites stock.xchng and StockXpert) is now a wholly owned subsidiary of Getty. Following the sale, JupiterMedia changed its name to WebMediaBrands Inc. In August 2009,

Quinstreet QuinStreet, Inc. is a publicly traded marketing company based in Foster City, California. QuinStreet offers performance-based marketing and search engine marketing services. QuinStreet was founded in 1999, and has launched or acquired dozens of w ...

Inc. acquired the Internet.com division of WebMediaBrands for $18 million. Among the sites sold as part of Internet.com were

InternetNews.com QuinStreet, Inc. is a publicly traded marketing company based in Foster City, California. QuinStreet offers performance-based marketing and search engine marketing services. QuinStreet was founded in 1999, and has launched or acquired dozens of w ...

, Webopedia.com, ServerWatch.com, DatabaseJournal.com,

Datamation ''Datamation'' is a computer magazine that was published in print form in the United States between 1957 and 1998,

.com, eSecurityPlanet.com, EnterpriseNetworkingPlanet.com, SmallBusinessComputing.com and Developer.com. WebMediaBrands changed its name to Mediabistro on June 13, 2013. On May 29, 2014, Mediabistro announced that it would sell its publishing assets to

, a subsidiary of

, for $8 million. The remainder of the company, including its trade show operations, were retained under the name Mecklermedia. On September 10, 2015, MecklerMedia announced that, in conjunction with New York based Sagamore III LLC, that it had purchase
3DPrint.com
and related assets from Forum Advertising LLC of Cape Coral, Florida. The purchase included a 25% equity position o
3DPrintBoard.com
On December 16, 2016, Mediabistro's former book publishing blog, GalleyCat, announced that it was ceasing publication.

References

{{authority control American companies established in 1994 American companies disestablished in 2015 Companies based in Westport, Connecticut Research and analysis firms