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Flush with cash from its recent IPO, and brushing aside questions about a potential conflict of interest, research firm Jupiter Communications has taken a stake in Inside.com, a start-up information Web site targeted at media and entertainment professionals.

The investment, whose terms were not disclosed, is part of a $23 million second funding round recently completed by Inside.com's parent, Powerful Media. Initial investments came from Flatiron Partners, Chase Capital Partners and others.

Jupiter said it plans to work with Inside.com to collaborate on building extended communities, sharing content and driving traffic to both organizations' web sites.

Powerful Media is the brainchild of former New York Magazine editor Kurt Anderson and partner Michael Hirschorn. The start-up is building a Web publication that tracks the convergence of all media -- film, television and the Internet, for example, while providing trenchant analysis of the developing media world. Deanna Brown, a former president with Brill's Content, is managing the start-up.

The announcement had barely hit the wires, however, when news media outlets questioned whether the stake would create conflict of interest issues -- or at least the appearance of conflict -- regarding other media companies that Jupiter researches. Both companies say there is no cause for concern.

Any type of strategic relationship has that potential, Brown said in an interview. "I'm confident that their job is to do their job and not be affected by the (investment)." Foremost in the investment decision, she added, is that Jupiter sees a company with growth potential and strong management that is rapidly assembling an anticipated product. The strategic nature of the stake is the second part of the equation, whereby "we share content opportunities as well as community opportunities. That means that Jupiter has a lot of research analysis of interest to cross industries which is interest to our community," she added.

That community includes film executives, news media staff and anyone whose job falls into the ever-murkier-to-define world of media.

In a statement, Jupiter's CEO Gene DeRose called the stake strategic "because it brings us together with Powerful Media, a company that is closely aligned to the space in which Jupiter plays -- the converging worlds of digital media, music, film and television."

A Jupiter spokeswoman also called the investment part of the chairman's vision of creating "an unbiased source for the Internet economy."