Mecklermedia was a U.S.-based corporation. The original WebMediaBrands was established in 1994, and headquartered in New York. Founded by Alan M. Meckler and Tristan Louis, the company provides business-to-business 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 blogs covering various aspects of the media industry. In August 2014, Mediabistro sold its editorial properties to Prometheus Global Media, a subsidiary of Guggenheim Partners, 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 and conferences. In 1995, as advertising-supported publishing emerged as a viable business model on the Web, the Website was relaunched by Tristan Louis under the name iWorld and began to publish content for the nascent Internet industry. As the InternetWorld 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 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. 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 division, which operated two online image libraries, stock.xchng, a library of free-to-use photographs and illustrations, and StockXpert, a low-cost Microstock photography 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. In October 2008, Jupitermedia announced that they would be selling their online images division, Jupiterimages, to the stock photography agency Getty Images for $96 million in cash. The sale went ahead in February 2009; Jupiterimages is now a wholly owned subsidiary of Getty. Following the sale, JupiterMedia changed its name to WebMediaBrands Inc. In August 2009, Quinstreet Inc. acquired the Internet.com division of WebMediaBrands for $18 million. Among the sites sold as part of Internet.com were InternetNews.com, Webopedia.com, ServerWatch.com, DatabaseJournal.com, Datamation.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 Prometheus Global Media, a subsidiary of Guggenheim Partners, for $8 million. The remainder of the company, including its trade show operations, were retained under the name Mecklermedia. On December 16, 2016, Mediabistro's former book publishingblog, GalleyCat, announced that it was ceasing publication.
