We announced today that we made an investment in a new area of the stock photo industry called "micropayments." Rather than explain the investment I suggest you read the link.

This is more than a mere investment for Jupiterimages. We will be working closely with the two founders of the HAAP sites to not only grow their prominence and already immense traffic, but to hopefully make stockxpert a highly profitable world micropayment brand. The other terrific benefit for Jupiterimages is that the community site is growing rapidly and shortly various Jupiterimages subscription brands will be advertised exclusively on the site (heretofore competitive micropayment brand ads were displayed). We believe this will further advance our worldwide sales.

Community has always been part of the Jupiterimages growth strategy. There is no ecommerce business in the world that would not gain sales by having a significant community position -- many "just do not get it." However, we have been busily building community with such sites as megapixel.net and graphics.com, and through our magazines and sister sites stepinsidedesign.com and dynamicgraphics.com.

I would be remiss if I did not mention that the two founders (Peter Hamza and Andras Pfaff) of HAAP Media built these properties while attending university in Hungary. This is yet another example of the brillance that we continuously observe of young entrepreneurs in today's Internet world. And amazingly the ideas just keep on coming!