| Type | Public |
|---|---|
| Traded as | NASDAQ: WEBM |
| Industry | Internet |
| Predecessor | Jupitermedia |
| Founded | Westport, Connecticut (1994) |
| Headquarters | New York, USA |
| Key people | Alan Meckler, CEO/Director |
| Products | Media coverage, Job boards, Events, Online education |
| Subsidiaries | Mediabistro.com |
| Website | www.webmediabrands.com |
WebMediaBrands Corp. a U.S.-based corporation, established in 1971, headquartered in New York, is a leading Internet media company that provides content, education, and career services to media and creative professionals through a portfolio of vertical online properties, communities and trade shows.
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WebMediaBrands, Inc. in one form another goes back to 1971 when Alan M. Meckler started his original publishing business called Microform Review, Inc. in Weston, Connecticut. Microform Review, Inc. was created to review microfiche and microfilm collections for research libraries. The key product for reviews was a print journal called Microform Review, originally published quarterly and then bi-monthly. From 1971 to 1979 Microform Review, Inc. expanded its coverage of microforms including publishing Microforms in Print, Microform Marketplace and a series of monographs to help research librarians manage microform collections. In addition Meckler started a trade show called The Library Microform Conference. This conference was first held in New York City at the Biltmore Hotel and then was held annually in a variety of cities around the United States until it ceased being run in 1979. Meckler also started publishing, under the imprint of Meckler Publishing, in the field of history. Early titles included Biographical Directory of the Governors of the United States, Obituaries from The Times, and a host of other directories aimed at research libraries world wide.
Meckler realized by the end of the 1970s that microform reporting was a fine small business, but that growth would be limited. He moved his company into coverage of the recently invented optical disk field by starting a journal called Optical Disk and Videodisk. The company also started a trade show called Optical Information Systems. In addition a series of monographs and other printed aids were produced in the early 1980s. The trade show, Optical Information Systems, was expanded to London and the west coast of the United States. By 1983 Meckler started the first coverage of the recently invented CD-ROM which was being used in research libraries.
In 1983 the company name was changed to Meckler Publishing Corporation. Meckler started running seminars on the use of CD-ROM and published the first monograph about the CD-ROM, The Essential Guide to CD-ROM in 1984. The 1980s saw a rapid creation of small conferences for research librarians around the United States such as: The Library Preservation Conference, The Library Serials Conference, and The Library Government Documents Conference.
A watershed event was the purchase by Meckler in 1984 of a newsletter from the University of Arizona Graduate Library School started by Allan Pratt called Small Computers in Libraries. Meckler purchased this for $190,000 and turned it into a monthly magazine. The already successful newsletter thrived in magazine format and soon there was a new conference called Computers in Libraries or CIL. CIL was held in a variety of cities. Ultimately it was presented annually in London, England, Toronto, Canada and Washington, DC. Meckler Publishing also became the largest publisher of monographs, reference books and databases for research libraries interested in the use of digital technologies around the world. Notable titles included: CD-ROMS in Print, Words on Tape, OPAC Directory, and a very successful book entitled The Essential Guide to IBM PC for Libraries. Another significant success was the launch of another monthly magazine called CD-ROM Librarian and Database Researcher.
By 1990 Meckler realized that the strength of the company was in publishing technology information for research libraries. The company had some solid success with books such as the multi-volume The Nazi Holocaust and even books covering baseball history (Blackball Stars and Baseball History) as well as a series of microfiche collections of type specimens from the New York Botanical Garden and The Smithsonian Institution.
Meckler sold off the original part of Meckler Publishing in the microform arena to Bowker-Saur Publishing New York and Munich in 1990 (this included Microforms in Print and Microform Review). With these funds Meckler bought out a Swedish company that had purchased an interest in the company in the early 1980s and used the remainder of the funds to invest in more technology titles. Meckler also sold all of his history titles to Greenwood Press as well as Gale Research.
At about this time Meckler learned about the Internet through a dinner conversation with several librarians at a Computers in Libraries conference in Washington, DC. At that time the Internet was only text and extremely difficult to utilize. The World Wide Web did not become a factor with Internet evolution until early 1994. Meckler immediately grasped that the Internet was the next big thing in delivery of information. However he felt it was at best a tool for libraries and academics. Meckler immediately tried to find someone who would be able to write and edit bi-monthly newsletter about Internet news. He was shocked that few if any colleagues believed there was any future to the Internet as a commercial tool. After a four month search he found a librarian at the University of San Diego Law School who said he would attempt to produce enough copy for a bi-monthly newsletter. The first issue of what became known as Internet World was launched in October 1990 at the Educom conference in Atlanta, Georgia.
From 1990 until 1992 the Internet newsletter had but a handful of subscribers. Several editors were brought in to edit the newsletter. But finally Daniel Dern was hired in 1992 and the combination of Dern and commercial developments with the Internet brought the first small success for the publication. Also at this time Meckler started some efforts to run conferences about the Internet. The first attempt was in Oakland, California in March 1991. The second attempt was New York City in January 1992. Both of these shows were failures. However in December 1992 Meckler’s Internet and Libraries conference had great success in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. At about this time Meckler first realized that the Internet might be a tool that had economic growth well beyond libraries. The catalyst for this was a talk given by Mitch Kapor (founder of Lotus) at a January 1993 event Meckler Publishing ran in New York City plus a seminal article written by Daniel Dern in Byte magazine in the same month. Both felt that the Internet could be bigger than the microcomputer in terms of impact on life and business. Sparked by these events, Meckler decided to turn the print newsletter into a bi-monthly magazine called Internet World (first issue was September 1993). He also started a trade show by the same name in December 1993. The magazine had a print run of 50,000 copies and over 40,000 were sold at newsstands. The first trade show had a handful of exhibitors but over 1,000 paid registrants. Ironically, the first day of the trade show in December 1993 was also the first time Meckler learned of the World Wide Web. John Markoff of The New York Times had a front page article announcing the invention of the World Wide Web by Tim Berners-Lee. In essence, the Internet could now “go multi-media.”
Meckler hit gold with the Internet and Internet World the magazine and trade shows. The company name was changed to Mecklermedia Corporation in January 1994 and the company had a successful, but small, public offering in February 1994. By 1998 Mecklermedia was running the Internet World trade shows in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago. It was common to have 75,000 attendees and as many 400 exhibiting companies. Internet World was also launched in 20 countries around the world. Mecklermedia was the first company to combine print, trade shows and a website and grasped well before the rest of the industry how all the media could be used to promote each other. The website for the company was first known as MecklerWeb. By 1995 it became iWorld.com and two years later, Internet.com. One of the first online ads appeared on iWorld in 1994 from MCI. Meckler also made the first website acquisition in the world in 1994 when he bought TheList.com. There was no lawyer who had ever worked on a website acquisition at this time. Therefore Meckler and his editor in chief, Tony Abbott, devised a contract that took into account a value for page views and a deal was struck. Mecklermedia went on to purchase about 100 more websites from in the 1990s and built Internet.com into one of the first Websites to vertically cover a BtoB industry.
Huge BtoB trade publishing companies such as IDG, Ziff Davis and CMP attempted to push Mecklermedia out of the Internet space in the 1990s. However the company was able to fend off all of the threats and thrusts and developed into an economic juggernaut. Mecklermedia purchased ISPCON and Boardwatch Magazine in 1998. Later in 1998 Mecklermedia was sold to Penton Media for $274 million in cash.
Penton Media did not want to manage or control the Mecklermedia Website assets known as Internet.com. Therefore as part of the deal, after closing, Meckler purchased the Internet assets and started a new company called Internet.com Corporation. Internet.com went public in June 1999. Internet.com has a network of websites that provided original news and information about the Internet and tech industries. As values for Internet companies shot up, Internet.com shared in the craze so that by March 2000, the company was valued at over $1.5 billion. The Internet crash that started in April 2000 after Jack Willoughby’s article appeared in Barron’s took down the values of all public Internet companies. This was compounded by 9/11. By the end of September 2001, Internet.com’s stock was valued at $0.96.
The Internet crash forced a reshaping of Internet.com. The name was changed to INT Media in 2002. Meckler purchased JupiterResearch in the summer of 2002 as it was on the verge of bankruptcy. INT Media immediately changed its name to Jupitermedia Corporation after the acquisition of JupiterResearch. The company had also gone back into the event and trade show business and was running several small events including Search Engine Strategies, ITSMF, Grid Computing, CDXPO and several others. Search Engine Strategies (SES) became the centerpiece of the company’s new efforts to grow trade shows. Meckler used the formula that he had been successful with for Computers in Libraries and Internet World and started running SES in three cities in the USA as well as abroad.
June 2003 found Jupitermedia purchasing Photos.com of Tucson, Arizona and creating a division JupiterImages. The success of the Photos.com acquisition sparked an acquisition spree of several more stock photo companies. The strategy looked brilliant as Jupitermedia’s stock rose from sub $2.00 to $24.00 by the end of 2004. Unfortunately the company did not follow through on one acquisition in 2004 that would have been a game changer. It was offered a small Canadian company called iStockPhoto for $5 million. Not purchasing this company at that time turned out to be a huge mistake. iStockPhoto was on the verge of revolutionizing the stock photo business from a traditional model of creation of the best images by professional photographers into one where user generated content became the gold standard. By 2006 user generated content images were destroying the value of collections of traditional stock photos. Now any type of organization could purchase an excellent photo for as little as $1.00 vs. what had been an average price of well over $100.00.
Jupitermedia continued purchasing traditional stock photo companies in the period 2005-2006 including Comstock, Thinkstock, GoodShoot, Dynamic Graphics, PictureArts and several others worldwide. In addition, Jupitermedia purchased Mediabistro, an online media company in 2007.[1] The buying program found the company with debt of $81 million as the great financial crisis enveloped the world in 2008. The combination of the user generated content image revolution and a horrible economy put great pressure on the viability of Jupitermedia. ( The Jupiterimages division came close to being sold to Getty Images in March 2007, but this deal for $388 million fell apart a day before closing.) A concerted effort was made to sell the Jupiterimages division of the company in 2008. Getty Images signed a purchase agreement for the assets and certain liabilities for $96 million in cash in October 2008 (the deal closed in February 2009).[2]
The Getty Images deal for the Jupiterimages division was severely impacted by the financial crisis and particularly the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers in September 2008. While the deal was signed a month after the failure of Lehman, the price prior to the Lehman shockwave was in the neighborhood of $130 million. Jupitermedia like so many other organizations suffered greatly from the economic duress of these years.
The sale of Jupiterimages meant that Jupitermedia had a variety of media websites under the following brands: Internet.com, Mediabistro.com and Graphics.com. The company decided to change its name to WebMediaBrands, Inc. in June 2009 to better reflect a “new start” and to emphasize the idea that the company consisted of a variety of BtoB and professional communities. The plan was to build out the present communities and to possibly add additional categories organically or through acquisition.
In November 2009 Quinstreet, Inc. purchased the Internet.com assets from WebMediaBrands for $18 million in cash. The sale of Internet.com allowed the company to enhance its balance sheet and to concentrate its attention on Mediabistro and its far-reaching platform that covered the media industry.[3]
Mediabistro was founded by Laurel Touby in 1996 as an online community that could connect freelance and professional writers for career growth, job search and education. She sold the business to Jupitermedia in July, 2007 for $20 million and a possible $3 million earn out.
The economic decline of 2008-2009 stymied Mediabistro growth. However several initiatives were started that blossomed in 2010 including a move into covering social media, creating and purchasing social media trade shows, enhancing online education and the online job board. At the start of 2011 Mediabistro has 18 blogs and is arguably a leader in covering the media industry and social media arena.
The company made a significant acquisition in May 2011 with its purchase of Inside Network, a news and research network devoted to coverage of social media developments in social gaming, virtual goods, Facebook, and apps.[4] The acquisition immediately made WebMediaBrands one of the most significant providers of subscription research services in the social media arena. AppData.com is arguably the number one research tool for app data in the world. The acquisition when combined with the company’s other social media assets such as AllFacebook.com, SocialTimes.com, and AllTwitter.com made WebMediaBrands the leader in providing information to the BtoB social media marketplace.
The company has made significant efforts to provide information for the fast growing Semantic Web through the SemanticWeb.com blog and companion trade show. WebMediaBrands is continuing to develop its AllCreativeWorld network of sites and services.
Alan M. Meckler is Chairman and CEO and a member of the board. Outside directors are: John R. Patrick, Gilbert Bach, Wayne Martino, Michael Davies, William Shutzer, and Justin Smith. The company is based in New York City at 475 Park Avenue South. In addition it has offices in Norwalk, Connecticut.