Getty Images, the stock photo giant, is in advanced talks to acquire smaller rival Jupitermedia, in a move to expand its suite of offerings to site designers and online marketers, according to NYPost. My guess is this is for the online images division of JUMP, not the whole company, though NYP doesn’t mention it…JUPM is made of of an online tech media division, an events division and over the last two years, an images division.  The company has bought a slew of small online image sites across U.S. and Europe since the new division started.
The story cites a source saying JUPM could fetch more than $11 a share, or nearly $450 million including debt.
JUMP CEO Alan Meckler has been dissing rivals Getty and Corbis on his blog for a while now, so this would be a change of heart for him.
Update: Meckler says it is a rumor…that doesn’t mean anything either way.