It was no secret that the media trade site mediabistro.com was for sale, and the asking price of $25 million was reported so widely that it was easily believable. But yesterday’s word that the buyer (for $20 million now and maybe $3 million maybe later) was Alan Meckler and Jupitermedia was, well, pretty surprising.
Alan’s a legit internet pioneer and visionary. He parlayed a print newsletter about library IT systems into the Internet World magazine and tradeshows — one of the most successful expos of any kind in the world. He sold them at the peak, keeping the internet.com domain, then got into the stock photo and imagery business, where he’s now one of the world’s most successful purveyors of art. Alan’s been quite forthright and pleased about the crazy-high profit margins in the stock art business, but his recent business activity shows a continuing affection for tech and the trade show business.
Then he went and shelled out $23 million for mediabistro — big money for a site that pulls 50,000 unique visitors a month. The online consensus is that he’s lost his mind.
I worked for Alan and I’ve competed with Alan. I like the guy. But Alan has never spent a nickel more on anything than he absolutely had to. I don’t know what he saw in mediabistro that was worth that kind of money. I’m sure he likes the busy job board and the likelihood that a trade show or industry association could coalesce around the site. I’m certain he likes the seminar business. I doubt that he cares about the buzz that mediabistro’s blogs work so hard to generate, with the probably exception of TVNewser, which is a must-read in that business and probably drives tons of traffic.
Alan’s careful but not shy about posting on his blog (by the way, one of the first CEO blogs), and he’s been silent about the purchase as of this writing. I’d like to know what he’s thinking….