Jupitermedia-Getty Talks Terminated

Jupitermedia (JUPM), the world's third largest stock photography company, announced in a press release statement today that talks with Getty (GYI), the world's largest stock photography company, have been terminated. No details were provided and the press release noted a "long-standing company policy not to confirm or deny market rumors."

Alan Meckler, Jupitermedia's CEO, has been remarkably candid over the past few years on his blog. When speculation first arose about a possible acquisition of Jupiter by Getty, Meckler cited security laws as the reason why he couldn't talk about the potential acquisition:

"Security law regulations prevent me from commenting beyond our press release of yesterday. Therefore this blog will confine itself for the time being to general Internet commentary and highlights of Jupitermedia divisional insights," said Meckler in a February 23, 2007 blog post.

It might be interesting to speculate on why the deal did not go through, but it could have been anything. Price, lockups, control, direction, any number of these things could have gone into this deal not happening.

The Wall Street Journal recently ran an interesting article on the future of the stock photography business. If you are a paid WSJ subscriber it's worth checking out.

Disclosure: I am CEO of Zooomr; we are currently building an internet based stock photography agency.

GYI vs. JUPM 1-yr chart