JupiterImages' New Web Site . . .

Stock Asylum Staff Report
October 24, 2005

JupiterImages has "soft-launched" a vastly improved web site that brings together numerous image brands under a single search engine for the first time in the company's short but rapidly expanding foray into stock photography.

"We're testing it out," said Alan Meckler, chairman and CEO of Jupitermedia Corporation, which owns JupiterImages. "We don't consider it official yet. There are still one or two items that need tweaking."

The new site includes rights-managed brands alongside the royalty-free offerings that the Darien, CT, company is most known for. There are now about 600,000 images on the site with more to come, according to Meckler.

JupiterImages entered the rights-managed stock photography market last winter when it purchased Creatas, but did not make a serious commitment to the high-end product until this summer when it bought PictureArts.

The new web site has a number of collections not owned by JupiterImages, including rights-managed libraries by Superstock, Graphistock, Oxford Scientific and photolibrary. New royalty-free brands include those by Corbis, Stockbyte, Imagesource and Dex.

The web site sports a new bright blue and gray "JupiterImages" logo over the phrase "your search ends here." It offers a reasonably good, though not perfect, search engine and a feature that brings up a mid-sized version of any image when a cursor moves over its thumbnail. This last improvement should be a significant time-saver for searchers, allowing a better look at each image without having to click back and forth between thumbnails and preview pages.

As with most sophisticated stock agency web offerings, customers can create light boxes. JupiterImages new site lets users create multiple light boxes, add notes and e-mail the packages to clients or others involved in the creative process.

Meckler said the web site should be "official" in a couple of weeks.

"But, even when it is officially launched," Meckler added, "the final product won't be done until March. At that time, we'll be second to none."

Meckler said his company will add additional independent collections to the web site within 40 to 50 days. JupiterImages also plans to purchase additional stock photography brands, the company has said.

Smaller web sites operated by various JupiterImages-owned brands like PictureArts, Comstock and Clipart.com will continue to operate for the foreseeable future, Meckler said. He noted that the smaller sites bring in a considerable amount of business.

 

 

JupiterImages can be found at: http://www.jupiterimages.com