I have been in business since 1969. I have had many downs and a few significant "ups" during this time. My greatest up was the creation of the trade show Internet World. The downs have been myriad, but fortunately none of them were "life threatening."

A great new up was the entrance of Jupitermedia into selling stock photos and clipart online. Starting with the purchase of ArtToday.com June 30, 2003, we have been on quite an educational and ecommerce learning experience. Since the aforementioned purchase we have announced the acquisition of Comstock Images and tomorrow morning we are announcing the acquisition of Thinkstock.com and ThinkstockFootage.com.

Selling stock images online was popularized by the hugely successful Getty Images. Getty revolutionized the stock photography industry much like Amazon changed the book selling industry.

Now Jupitermedia is going to further evolve the stock imagery business beyond what Getty has accomplished, much like Wal-Mart was able to better K-Mart and a host of other discounters in the past 30 years.

None of this could happen without the Internet. Internet commerce developments have turned several industries on their respective heads. I have mentioned bookselling. But think of travel, prescriptions, music, DVDs, auctions, and many others.

I have been in and around the Internet business since 1990 - mainly being the purveyor of information about the industry through publications, research and trade shows. Now for the first time I am involved in the trenches with a significant ecommerce play. Our company is right in the middle of grabbing chunks of a $2 billion industry. I will report in future posts on how we are fast becoming the Wal-Mart of stock imagery. A hint: lots of our success is coming via the use of our community sites and our massive base of unique visitors. As I said --- stay tuned.