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back to article GeoCities 2.0 auctions self on eBay

In the summer of 2006, at the height of the digerati's Web 2.0 frenzy, social networking startup Kiko.com sold itself on eBay. The share-your-appointments-with-the-world online calendar extravaganza was pulling in exactly zero dollars a month. But after a flurry of late bidding, eBayers decided it was worth $258,100. Now, …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Numbers...

    ....if it's actually pulling in 4k/month, that's 60k/year... you should be able to get more than that for it. A 1x multiplier is conservative indeed! :)

    OTOH, if costs are $3,999/month, all bets are off. I'd be interested to know what net profit is.

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  2. Francis Vaughan

    Provisional patent

    You can't really usefully sell a provisional patent. The only person who can obtain a patent is the inventor. A provisional patent can only be converted to a full patent by the inventor. Unless the sale includes an iron clad contract with the inventor (the actual person), that the inventor will proceed to patent the invention and then assign it to the purchaser the "sale" of the provisional patent is almost worthless. If the guys want to go to grad school they might not be all that interested in the addtional work. (Although the innovatine work is already done in the provisional filing, the attorney's work is still to come. That of course is the expensive bit. As is the cost of the full patent filing.)

    The filing of the provisional patent means no-one else can patent the same idea. What is sold is thus probably a guarantee that the inventor cannot go forward and patent it unless they assign it to the purchaser, or that the provisional patent will be allowed to lapse, in which case the idea becomes henceforth unpatenable. Something which might arguably be a worthwhile thing anyway.

    None of this changes the fact that patenting business methods is just plain silly.

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  3. stizzleswick
    Coat

    @Francis Vaughn

    I agree that patenting business methods and algorithms is a bit on the silly side. However I would like to point out that in the real world, relatively few patents are filed by the inventors. If you're in R&D the contract usually includes a clause which makes all inventions you make while working for the company the company's property. Also, a considerable amount of patents are filed by and granted to parties that had nothing at all to do with the invention (if you want a classic case, you might want to look up the filings for the U.S. patent on barbed wire…).

    Mine's the one with "IANAL" on the back…

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  4. Anonymous Coward
    Stop

    domains

    "The domains Clutterme.com, Cludderme.com, Cluterme.com, Cluderme.com, Clutterme.us, Clutterme.org, Clutterme.us, Clutterme.ca, and Clutter.me"

    Aren't there rules against selling the same thing multiple times? As far as I can tell, "Clutterme.us" is the same as "Clutterme.us" and thus should only be listed once. Does it go against ebay liting guidelines??

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  5. Wyrmhole

    GeoCities?

    Don't you think that article title is a little TOO misleading?

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  6. Andy Barber
    Boffin

    @ stizzleswick

    Isn't it obvious that this thing is a scam, set up by teenagers wearing a Baseball hat's with a propeller on the top?

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  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Just about worthless

    Quote from the blog on the site - bear in mind there's two of them

    "Per hour, we get paid around $2."

    And they think people will pay money for that?

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  8. RW
    Coat

    @ Andy Barber

    The proverbial cap with the propeller on top was a beanie, not a baseball hat.

    For your further edification: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beanie

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  9. Jolyon Ralph
    Boffin

    @anoncoward re: domains

    They're certainly confused about whether they have one or two domains called clutterme.us

    if you go to http://www.clutterme.us it (currently) rediects you to http://www.clutterme.us

    And no, that doesn't work well.

    Jolyon

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  10. Pierre
    Joke

    Mwahahahahaha

    Must be a joke, surely...

    Sadly it might not.

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  11. de montety
    Happy

    Already done? Chaussetteonline.com sold on eBay in April 2006

    Kiko and ClutterMe did not invent that style of auction sale of a small e business entity on eBay.

    We did it for the founders of chaussetteonline.com. See the full story on our blog here http://montetyferal.blogs.com/montety_fral_cie_zeblog/2006/05/chaussetteoneli.html

    Regards

    Olivier de Montety

    www.montetyferal.com

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