Jupitermedia CEO Alan Meckler

May 8, 2008

Pizza Bonanza!

Great article on CNN today about the huge growth in the online pizza business.  The numbers are staggering.  Maybe Amazon should buy Papa John's!!?

Posted by Alan Meckler at 11:35 AM Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack |

Yahoo - Next Steps

The press continues to speculate on Yahoo's future.  Microsoft denies it will pursue Yahoo again.  Obviously I do not know about Microsoft's intentions but I would not be surprised if Microsoft returns to its pursuit of Yahoo.  Microsoft is way behind Google in the Internet wars.  Nothing else out there compares to Yahoo's scale.  If Microsoft is serious about competing with Google, it has to own Yahoo.

What about Yahoo's situation?  Jerry Yang likes being CEO of a company he founded many years ago.  He is extremely wealthy.  He is young.  What would he do without Yahoo?  While I am sure he could keep occupied, I doubt he could achieve the high he gets from running Yahoo.  His work is his life.  He does not care about his stockholders nor speculators.  He honestly believes he can make Yahoo bigger and better so to heck with what anyone thinks. 

I am not rooting against Jerry (and David Filo).  But if Yahoo is remaining independent, it needs to change its growth strategy.  18 months ago I suggested that Yahoo should purchase Dow Jones.  Yahoo needs to be the biggest and best media company.  It can never be the biggest and best search company.  The mere fact that Yahoo is working with Google to farm out its search shows the world that Yahoo knows it has lost the search wars.

Therefore Yahoo should make a big purchase.  And once it makes the big purchase it might very well be the best defense against Microsoft returning to the hunt.  Yahoo did not take me up on buying Dow Jones.  But now I suggest two acquistions.  Yahoo should purchase Cnet and follow that up with buying up all or most of IAC.  The cost would be many billions.  But Yahoo would then offer an astounding array of Internet content, services and ecommerce offerings.  Combined with Yahoo's enormous traffic, this combo would clearly be a winner.  And as stated, it would keep Microsoft away forever.

More importantly these acquisitions would make Yahoo the most interesting Internet company in the world.  I am not sure that Yahoo has the right management to pull this off.  Regardless, this plan should be considered.

Posted by Alan Meckler at 9:14 AM Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack |

May 5, 2008

Microstock Diaries Reviews Our Moscow Event

The number one blog for the microstock industry had a neat review of our recent one-day gathering for Stockxpert in Moscow, Russia. 

When reading this review note the part where the writer mentions that Jupitermedia sent a few people over to the event.  Names are given and then he says "and a few other people."  I was one of the other people!  This actually make me happy that I was not mentioned.  In most endeavors in my career I have gotten top billing and in a few cases a fuss has been made about my being at an event.

Things were different in Moscow.  I was an observer.  I enjoyed watching attendees clamouring to get their photos taken with either Stockxpert founder Peter Hamza or super photographer Ron Chapple.  And most importantly I liked the last paragraph of the review.  We are getting across the idea that our microstock business and operations are very much a significant part of our entire image operations. 

 

 

Posted by Alan Meckler at 4:47 PM Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack |

May 3, 2008

Amazon Rave

I have been writing about my new Kindle.  Inadvertently I purchased a second Kindle by accident.  I had to return the extra Kindle and went to the Amazon site to arrange the return.  The experience was superb.

Amazon has a terrific interface for returns.  The best part of the process was how Amazon interacted with me on each stage of the return process.  First I got an email telling me the package was picked up by the delivery service.  Four days later I received an email that the return was received and that my payment was being processed.  And a day later the final email that the payment was sent to my credit card.

The lesson here is that Amazon won me over for future purchases.  The other lesson is how valuable customer service can be as a sales tool.  I am certainly going to tell this story over and over again to my colleagues at Jupitermedia.  We can all learn from Amazon.

Posted by Alan Meckler at 12:41 PM Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack |

April 30, 2008

Russia: Final Thoughts

I just got back from 6 days in Russia (Moscow and St. Petersburg).  Our Stockxpert meeting with several hundred contributors was extremely successful.  Our team of 6 that attended learned a lot about the needs of our rapidly growing pool of microstock contributors.

Some travel thoughts:  I had to constantly remind myself that I was in Russia.  Moscow is a dynamic city with a fast pulse.  Lots of boutiques, sleek restaurants and money.  Red Square by day and particularly at night is one of the best sights anywhere. Many might know this (I didn't) that "Red" has nothing to do with politics or the old USSR flag.  Rather "Red" in Russian means a few things including the color, but more importantly it means beauty.  The lighting at night of the Kremlin and St. Basils Cathedral is fabulous.   Finally, Lenin's Tomb is a surreal experience.  Seeing the embalmed Lenin in his underground tomb is not something that is easy to describe.  Lenin appears to be a yellow-orange color and apparently was small in stature.

St. Petersburg is a totally different experience.  No vibrancy.  Just a lovely city with lots of canals, the amazing Hermitage,  and the Neva River.  Peter The Great can be felt throughout the city.  By the way, I did have an odd adventure two nights ago when some thugs tried to break into my room at the Astoria Hotel.  I won't  bore readers with the details except to say it happened about 2 am while I was busy with email.  I was not harmed and the potential intruders escaped into the night. 

Both cities have so much history that one could easily spend one week in each city and still only get a glimpse of their respective riches.  If you go to Russia be prepared for difficult communications.  I found little to no English spoken in both cities.  Also a paucity of English signs.

One final note:  the security check in the Helsinki airport is the most thorough I have come across in my world travels.

 

 

 

Posted by Alan Meckler at 11:31 PM Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack |

April 28, 2008

Kindle Has A Problem!

I have been on the road in Europe with my new Kindle.  Readers know I have given Kindle a rave review to date. Unless I am missing something I have found a major flaw in Kindle for someone who travels outside of the USA.

One of the nice features of Kindle is the ability to subscribe to The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal.  A user can buy these papers by the day, a week or a month.  Of course that means that the papers would be automatically downloaded.

Unfortunately Kindle uses (I believe) the Sprint network.  Sprint is fine if you remain in the United States but it does not work outside the USA.  This means that I cannot get the above mentioned newspapers.

I find it hard to believe that the Amazon team did not think this problem through?  Perhaps this is a case of a bunch of engineers based in Seattle who never travel outside of the USA and therefore missed this point?  Amazon needs to rectify this problem or at least give refunds to those who subscribe to the Times and Wall Street Journal.

Posted by Alan Meckler at 2:40 AM Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBack |

April 24, 2008

Moscow

I have arrived in Moscow.  Quite interesting for someone of my age who grew up in the midst of the cold war and fear of the then Soviet Union.  Tomorrow we setup for the Stockxpert convention taking place on Saturday.  I am looking forward to meeting with hundreds of Stockxpert contributors.

I must mention my first experiences with my new Kindle.  The device is very intuitive to operate.  Downloading books is a true snap.  I read parts of Doris Kearns Goodwin's book - Team of Rivals - which deals with Abraham Lincoln and his management of his cabinet of super strong personalities during the Civil War.  The Kindle was easy to use.  Lots of nuances to pick up but I think I have great piece of equipment.  Best of all the device weighs only a few ounces and the battery seems to last for at least 6 hours or more. 

The Kindle is another part of the Internet revolution.  Future generations of this device should be mind boggling in terms of the services one will be able to access.  I know that one can read books on smartphones (at least on the BlackBerrry) so it is possible that the Kindle could be overtaken by smartphone technology.  Amazon will probably merge the Kindle technology onto a variety of smarphone platforms.  We should be covering that on our new blog - Mobile Content Today and our new tradeshow Mobile Content Strategies.

 

Posted by Alan Meckler at 10:23 AM Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack |

April 22, 2008

Kindle To Russia

I am about to leave for Russia tomorrow afternoon.  I am attending our first Stockxpert gathering for photographers and contributors on Saturday in Moscow (at the Marriott Courtyard).  I rarely do siteseeing when I travel but I will make an exception on this trip.  I did visit the Taj Mahal on a Saturday during my India trip in February and that led to a car accident.  Hopefully things will go smoother in Russia?

Last night I had dinner with John Patrick.  John is a member of the Board of Directors of Jupitermedia.  More importantly he began all things Internet at IBM in the 1990s.  John pulled a Kindle out of his briefcase and I was impressed.  I ordered my own this morning and expect to have it by airplane boarding tomorrow afternoon.

I just received a notification from Amazon that shows the genius behind Amazon and the Kindle.  Amazon wanted me to know that my account for wireless ordering of books, magazines and newspapers for Kindle can be accomplished by using my normal Amazon account information.  I am geared up to put the Kindle through its paces.  And of course I will keep readers informed.

 

 

 

Posted by Alan Meckler at 10:18 PM Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack |

April 21, 2008

Clipart Connection Subscription Launched

Jupiterimages is the leader in the world in selling digital content via subscription.  We have 12 subscription properties and continue to grow the list.  The most recent launches were Jupiter Images Unlimited and Stockxpert (our microstock offering).

We have owned a clip art site for years. It recently added 3.5 million more images for a new grand total of over 10 million making it the largest images subscription in the world.  And now we have launched Clip Art Connection.  Clip Art Connection offers 1 million images.  This smaller site is a great value for consumers and smaller marketing companies that do not require a 10 million image library.  Prices for this new offering start at $4.95 per week - needless to say a great bargain when one can download a large number of images per day.

We continue to innovate at Jupiterimages.  The future in the image and digital content arena is value buying.  Of the big three in the industry we are the one company that has the broadest offerings and is best suited to take advantage of the continuing buying revolution.  Many image companies will lose out if they do not change.  The Internet and the Web have produced a bifurcated market of top end and low end offerings.  The low end is where the growth will be in the future.  It will be growth larger than we have witnessed in the history of the image business.  While I cannot guarantee it, Jupiterimages is best equipped to handle this revolution.

Posted by Alan Meckler at 3:06 PM Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack |

April 19, 2008

Lucky Oliver Microstock Site To Close

The Lucky Oliver microstock site is closing its doors on 15 May.  Lucky Oliver got a lot of publicity.  The site is very nice.  So what happened?

My take is that there are now too many microstock sites.  The closing of Lucky Oliver is the beginning of the end for 80 percent of the approximately 40 microstock sites in the stock photo world.  This is capitalism and the survival of the fittest (and the well financed).

And at a time of cessation for Lucky Oliver it appears that microstock sites such Istockphoto and Shutterstock are thriving.  Certainly this is the case for our microstock site Stockxpert.  We are having a growth spurt at Stockxpert out of the ordinary.  I have been in a business for over 35 years and it is rare to have an operation that grows as rapidly as does Stockxpert.  The exciting thing about this growth is that we will be launching several initiatives in coming months in and around Stockxpert that none of our competitors offer (and most likely will not be able to offer).

 

Posted by Alan Meckler at 2:19 PM Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack |