Jupitermedia issued a press release today about the status of our legal action against eMarketer. The release lays out our position and should answer questions that many have asked or contemplate asking me via email. I will keep readers up to date on this legal action. We offered to settle this claim amicably, but to no avail. The people at eMarketer are nice fellows. Unfortunately we have a major disagreement on how eMarketer obtains its information about JupiterResearch --- thus the legal actions.

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.

At a recent court hearing over the eMarketer case that I have referenced, I learned that the eMarketer folks have been using my blog entries in the court (See August 17, 2004). I can only presume that this action was taken to show that Jupitermedia means business when it comes to legal actions. I just re-read my recent entry "update" about the case and can find nothing alarming other than an objective report on where the case stands.

My question is this: Could this be the first time a blog entry was used in court? Let me know.

Several weeks ago we launched our forums section for searchenginewatch.com. And what a terrific success this has become!

Membership is moving in on 1,500 and daily total page views are about 15,000. The quality of the members and the posts is second to none.

Periodically we send out some highlights from the Forums. Here is a link to our Search Engine Forums Spotlight for your perusal.

The progress in this area is a great way of seeing "community" in action. And of course the success of the SEW Forums further solidifies Jupitermedia's coverage of the search field (including the SES shows, JupiterResearch's search practice, searchenginewatch.com and now the forums).

I think Ziff Davis is making a move that will get them into the Guinness Book of Records or something similar! The Ziff people have decided to go retro and take a Web site and turn it into a magazine. The site in question is extremetech. A new magazine by the same name is about to be rolled out by ZD. It will be interesting to watch how this move plays out for Ziff. I have been on record as stating that tech based print magazines are doomed. Let's revisit this operation in about a year to see what happened.

I sure hope that this idea is better for Ziff than the glorious launch of the show to end all shows - Business4Site - now "suspended."

Several readers have asked me about the status of legal action against eMarketer. Some background. JupiterResearch which is a division of Jupitermedia Corporation believes that eMarketer copies portions of JupiterResearch's syndicated analysis and reproduces and sells this research in eMarketer reports. In addition, eMarketer often times misrepresents JupiterResearch opinions by misinterpreting JupiterResearch data in eMarketer publications. We have kindly asked eMarketer to cease these actions, but to no avail.

Therefore, we are taking legal action against eMarketer in the United States, England and now in France. eMarketer could have ended the legal actions by ceasing to publish JupiterResearch materials, but unfortunately this company has decided to meet us in court.

I will keep readers informed about these legal proceedings. And I might add that it is highly likely that several other research companies will take action against eMarketer in the coming months.

Marc Cuban has struck again. The man who made a billion on broadcast.com, who resurrected the Dallas Mavericks, who helped triple the stock price of mamma.com, who is taking on Donald Trump in the reality TV game, is now taking on Google and the Search industry with the launch of IceRocket.

I will leave it to Danny Sullivan to comment on what he thinks of this new entry into the Search wars. From my perspective, the site is a knock-off of the clean Google home page, but Cuban has added a feature that is unique. Every search entry has a thumbnail of the home page of the listing. This is clever and makes for a more interesting approach to reading entries.

I am sure Marc Cuban has more than thumbnails up his sleeve. I look forward to see the progress of Ice Rocket.

The Monday New York Times (9 August) had an article by Bob Tedeschi about how ecommerce sites are turning to "community" to make their sites "sticky." Tedeschi featured vegas.com and noted how its CEO has been adding content features to the already robust ecommerce offerings. Several other sites are mentioned as well.

It was amusing for me to read this "revelation" as we have been doing precisely this at our network of web sites since 1996. We have dozens of chat and discussion sites as well as original reporting. This carries over to our ecommerce offerings at Jupiterimages where we have 18 community sites for graphics professionals and are in the midst of building two new sites.

Tedeschi's article should be a wakeup call to many of the larger ecommerce players who do not understand the "community" angle. I will not name them, but many of the largest ecommerce consumer sites are remiss in this area.

Business4Site today announced that it will not be held this November in New York City. This horribly named and conceived show is using the same gimmick as Comdex in declaring its death -- the show is officially being called "suspended." TechX from CMP will be the next one to fall (Or is that "be suspended?").

In the meantime our inaugural Search Engine Strategies show in Sweden signed up Google and a few other companies as exhibitors last week in San Jose and several more came in today.

Again -- it takes focus and the right topic for a trade show to succeed today. Suspension is not going to work for these broken-down old banger-shows.

SES San Jose finished on Thursday. Records were set for sold exhibition space and total attendance. Re-sign for exhibition space for the next SES in San Jose is over 75% of 2004 numbers. For those who are not familiar with the re-sign process, these numbers are in outer space.

This leads me to Danny Sullivan. Danny is the man behind the success of SES all over the world. Starting as an unknown conultant in the search space in the mid-1990s, Danny has achieved "God-like" status in one of the hottest industry sectors in the world today. Not only does Danny put together every session of the SES shows, he also diligently edits the number one editorial property for the search industry, searchenginewatch.com.

It all comes down to content, and SES and searchenginewatch.com have the best content. And this is what brings in the paid attendees and the exhibitors. Danny, with the help of Chris Sherman, keeps the content evolving and interesting. His SES keynote is a treat. I saw 1,200-plus attendees on the edge of their seats. The keynote is one hour --- I think Danny could keep them interested for 12 hours!

Do yourself a favor and take in Danny and a SES in the coming months.

Have you been to jibjab? USA Today reported yesterday that 25 million people have viewed the hilarious cartoon about the presidential race set to the music of "This Land is Your Land".

The real story is the power of the Internet. Did anyone know of jibjab.com three weeks ago? Perhaps a few knew about this site, but certainly not 25 milliion people!

As predicted, Cebit America closed its doors today. The action was inevitable. I find it ironic that I am writing this on the floor of our incredibly successful Search Engine Strategies show at the San Jose Convention Center at the same time the obits for Cebit America are starting to hit the Net around the world. It just goes to show you that times have changed and that focus is in. And those that fail to see this and continue hoping that old tech trade shows will work are doomed to failure.

The next one to bite the dust will be Business4Site -- the show with the worst trade show name in history created by a bunch of consultants who are probably related to the same folks that were behind the Edsel fiasco.

Ironically too -- a few weeks ago a writer walloped me for running our InsideID trade show during the so-called "Comdex" week. This fellow told me to admit defeat and stop going after Comdex and didn't I get it that Comdex was the force and that Jupitermedia was the pretender, etc., etc. I guess it pays to be the last man standing as in fact InsideID is now the number one show in the USA during the erstwhile "Comdex" week. InsideID might not be successful, but it sure is focused and timely. We keep pushing and trying here at Jupitermedia. We do not always get it right, but we also can "hit it out of the park" with an idea like Search Engine Strategies, ITSMF, DRM Strategies and perhaps InsideID.

Monday was a great success for SES San Jose. We are over 1000 paid registrants with a few hundred more to register over the next three days. The exhibit hall opens today with over 80 organizations on the floor.

Arriving at the San Jose Convention Center and seeing the huge sign outside the hall for the show made me think back to the first Internet World held in San Jose back in 1994. In many ways SES is the next generation Internet World --it has the same excitement and it attracts lots of people looking for everything from services to jobs to VC funding.

It is very exciting indeed. More to come.