I had mentioned a few weeks ago that I would add some entries on our doings with images. Many readers probably know that Jupitermedia has four divisions: JupiterWeb (online media), JupiterResearch, JupiterEvents and JupiterImages.

We moved into images in June of last year when we purchased Arttoday. ArtToday pioneered the concept of selling clipart and photos by subscription.

Little did I know when we made this acquisition that it would start Jupitermedia on an exciting journey into developing a large network of image and graphics sites. Since the June 2003 acquisition, we have acquired numerous digitized image libraries and recently purchased Comstock Images and Thinkstock. More acquisitions are on the way.

Which brings me to the word NETWORK in the title of this post. When we entered the business fourteen months ago, I was told that the selling of images and stock photography was "locked up" by Getty and Corbis. This reminded me of television history. When Rupert Murdoch started to put the Fox Network together I am sure he was told that the television network business was "locked up." Of course we all know that today the Fox Network is the equal of if not better than the CBS, ABC and NBC networks.

And now Jupiterimages has become the third great image network along with Getty and Corbis. We could not have done this without buying great companies, great personel and combining it with our previously built JupiterWeb division and its 150 Web sites. In addition, this could not have been accomplished without the Internet.

The Internet allowed us to inexpensively leverage our millions of unique visitors (traffic) from our JupiterWeb division into becoming potential customers of our paid image product lines. In addition the Internet allowed us to rapidly grow JupiterImages around the world. And of course in the world of digitization, the Internet allowed us to create a powerful business with essentially no physical inventory -- a truly frictionless business with huge operating margins.

I will keep you informed about this amazing story.