Mediabistro for Nothing? (UPDATED)

I saw the story that Forrester bought Jupiter Media for about $23 million. However, Jupiter bought Mediabistro not too long ago for about the same amount of money. So what's going on? My guess is that the MB purchase may have been a not-too-smart acquisition, because what company buys another for X and then sells itself, with said acquisition, for the same amount of money? Jupiter must have been flailing about.

It does make me wonder about the long-term viability of MB. Forrester used to publish its own magazine not too long ago, but apparently didn't like the return they were getting on the investment and so scuttled the whole thing. MB seems to be peripheral to what Forrester does, which is market analysis and research. I'm guessing that they either shut the whole thing down or try to spin it off, though I'm not sure who would pick it up. Here's a tip of the hat to Ms. Touby for fabulous timing and getting out when the market crested.

Big Update

Looks like I am wrong and misread the story in a major way, as pointed out by a reader who used to work at Jupiter. It was JupiterResearch that Forrester bought, not JupiterMedia. The latter sold the former off Jupiter Research a year or two ago to a private equity firm, and it's the private equity firm that did the deal with Forrester. Ah, well, nothing like the dangers of reading and posting too quickly.

Even More Updating

I was curious about the quick spinaround, so I did some poking. The private equity firm, MCG Capital Corporation, bought JupiterResearch for $10.1 million in mid-2006. So it's more than doubled its money in two years. Not bad. Now, quick, someone stop me before I update again.