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End of an Era: Forrester Acquires JupiterResearch |
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In the hey-day of the dot com era, JupiterResearch carved a name for itself for having some of the brighter analysts covering emerging Internet technologies. During my days with a weekly magazine that covered the news of the Internet – Interactive Week – I would often pick up the phone to pick the brains of Jupiter’s analysts on a given topic or trend.
However, since the dot com crash Jupiter has for the most part fallen off my radar screen. As technology journalists once again focused on enterprise systems, Jupiter continued to offer research into more outer-edge topics such as the growth in online personals, Internet video usage, and mobile marketing.
That’s why news that Forrester Research has acquired Jupiter comes as somewhat of a surprise. Forrester, with its blue-chip customer base and much more traditional areas of research, does not seem like a great fit for Jupiter.
Forrester, of Cambridge, Mass., agreed to acquire New York-based Jupiter last week from MCG Capital Corp. for $23 million in cash, plus liabilities. Jupiter has 82 employees and 2007 revenues of about $14 million. By comparison, Forrester had 2007 revenues of $212 million and more than 1,000 employees.
According to a statement from the company, Jupiter will join Forrester’s Marketing & Strategy Client Group which contributed $46.4 million to Forrester’s total revenue. Forrester chief executive George Colony appears to be betting that Jupiter will help it gain a stronger foothold in understanding consumer behavior on the Internet and online advertising.
The acquisition does bring to an end a colorful history, at least for the rather staid world of technology research. Jupiter analyst David Schatsky does a good job of summing up the company’s history as well as his own take on the Forrester acquisition at this link.
Here’s the short form: Jupiter’s history dates all the way back to 1986 when Josh Harris established Jupiter Communications. It went public under then CEO Gene De Rose in 1999 and merged with Media Metrix in 2000, forming Jupiter Media Metrix. Alan Meckler, who made his fortune with the technology print and Internet conferencing company Mecklermedia, bought the company in 2002, renaming it JupiterMedia. In 2006, the company was sold to MCG Capital of Arlington, Va., and later merged it with Kagan Research, briefly forming JupiterKagan. The Kagan business was sold in 2007 and the name JupiterResearch reestablished.
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