

Threewords.me is up for private auction - mhunter
http://sale.threewords.me/

======
BrandonWatson
If anyone ever questions the value of the idea versus the value of execution,
use this as a cuationary tale. Here's my post outlining this very idea from 2
years ago:

<http://www.manyniches.com/n00b-notes/my3words/>

2 years. I even registered the domain my3words.com.

What did I do with it? Not much. I have no idea if Mark saw my post or not. I
kind of hope he did, so that I can feel a little better about not executing.
That maybe I inspired him.

However, that doesn't change the bottom line. He executed. Worth-ful. I had
the idea, but didn't execute. Worthless.

Hats off to Mark.

~~~
pizzaman
The whole "ideas are worth nothing" never made a lot of sense.

~~~
Charuru
I never got the hacker obsession with idea vs execution. It seems fairly
obvious to me that you need both to succeed?

~~~
Natsu
Most of us have plenty of ideas and not enough time to execute most of them.
So we're more impressed when someone shows us something cool that's actually
usable rather than another article about how someone had a vague idea for a
cool thing that's supposed to become practical in another 10 years, but which
we doubt will ever actually get produced.

In short, it's a lot easier to come up with an idea when you don't have to
actually do the work to make it feasible. See also: "I have an idea, I just
need a programmer or two."

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melvinram
Have you considered going to a larger company/brand like Dove and getting them
to buy it? Your audience seems right in line with their audience and they
probably already have a budget for "social media marketing". A good way to
reach them might be a big-brand social media consultant like VaynerMedia.com.
They could facilitate the sale and make a commission on the amount. I know
someone who knows Gary over at Vayner so if you're interested, I could try to
make the connection.

Alternatively, I can connect you with an investment banker who specializes in
selling internet based businesses, though I'm not sure if he'll be interested
since he typically deals in the 7-figures range... but I could run it by him
if you want.

I just think having a simple private auction without attracting the right
parties to the table might not get you the maximum the site could get. Just my
thought.

Anyway, congrats on the success so far and good luck with things. My email is
in my profile.

~~~
markbao
Hey Melvin — thanks for the suggestions! The only thing I'm not sure about is
why a general brand would want a threewords.me-like property under them.
What's a brand's motive for acquiring properties such as mine?

Yeah, probably true that it's not the best exposure. TechCrunch just picked it
up ([http://techcrunch.com/2011/01/17/weeks-after-going-viral-
thr...](http://techcrunch.com/2011/01/17/weeks-after-going-viral-threewords-
me-is-up-for-sale/)) but selling in a simple private auction is only one step
up from Flippa. And maybe one sideways.

Thanks for your help, man - will shoot you an email.

~~~
patio11
It proves to someone's bosses that they get this whole social media thing.

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markbao
Glad to see this already submitted :)

Yeah, I'm working on way too much stuff, and threewords.me started up as a
side project that I didn't have any interest in continuing it long-term (more
interested in developing <http://supportbreeze.com> and others).

The press curve has slowed, but a lot of users are still hitting the site (new
and returning) — every new feature I get is hugely adopted within minutes.

~~~
malnourish
Hey, one quick thing I noticed about supportbreeze. I noticed a lack of clear
confirmation when hovering the button "Get started for free" I can tell a
faint color change however there is no clear indication of my selection.

Whereas hovering other links gives a visual mouse indication and a visual
indication over the link.

Is that by design?

~~~
eam
It would be better to add _cursor:pointer;_ to _a#mk2_gs_ selector.

~~~
markbao
Ah, great point. I'll have to do that.

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marklittlewood
How can you sell something with no terms and conditions mentioned that he is
selling, "Sale includes data, domain, brand."

And then continue to say, "We promise we won't spam" on the signup page?

How does that work then?

~~~
theDoug
Well, I take it that /he's/ promising not to spam. The same that I can promise
that no crimes will happen in my home- it's only as good as long as it's _my_
home, not someone else's, and I can reasonably manage things.

Even with a friendly-reading T&C he'd be free to break it any time, as would
any future purchaser. I'm not a laywer but I'd believe T&Cs exist more to
protect a site than its users, presenting the general terms and conditions the
users can expect a site to be presented under, not a guarantee of of the same.

~~~
jarrett
Pre-existing contracts may be binding on someone who purchases a business. So
the buyer of a web site might be bound by the TOS. Thus, a promise to
customers could survive the company changing hands. (I can't speak to the
particulars of this case, though.)

The flip side is that TOSs typically have some provision for amendment. Such
provisions might be invoked by a company's new management. However, the
management has to be careful even then, because of this:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_form_contract>

Again, I'm not suggesting that any of this would necessarily apply to
threewords.me. This is just my understanding of how it works in general.

BTW, I couldn't find a link to the TOS for threewords.me.

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jacquesm
Very smart move this, rather than to figure out how to monetize it monetize it
by selling it while the growth curve is still exponential.

Also, looking at alexa it seems as though the period of hyper fast growth is
already a bit past:

<http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/threewords.me>

Still, it should fetch a pretty penny and to the right party it might be worth
quite a lot of money.

~~~
dolinsky
I'm genuinely curious why you suggest the growth curve on this is exponential
at this point? I saw this thread on HN when he originally posted it, and while
it wasn't something I would personally be interested in I imagined it might
fit a certain demographic. The question for me was always the staying power
with a quick hit site like this.

Now having seen a wider window of stats on the site from quantcast, all arrows
are pointing down and to the right. I agree that he's smart to try to sell it,
but only because the longer he holds onto it the less opportunity there will
be to capitalize on the original spike.

~~~
jacquesm
> I'm genuinely curious why you suggest the growth curve on this is
> exponential at this point?

I didn't suggest that.

I did add this bit after writing that first sentence when I thought of
checking to see if that was still the case, and it wasn't:

> Also, looking at alexa it seems as though the period of hyper fast growth is
> already a bit past:

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callmeed
If I was a digital agency/consultancy, I'd snap this up. I think it would be
fairly easy to fork and customize for big brands that want to do Facebook
promotions, reviews, focus groups, etc.

"Tell us your 3 favorite items at Applebee's ..."

"Thanks for trying the new filet mignon chalupa at Taco Bell. Describe it in 3
words ... "

"What 3 things are most important when choosing your next car? ..."

(I'm sure someone more creative could do better, but you get the idea)

~~~
markbao
Good ideas. Some brands and celebrities have a threewords.me with cool
results, like Smashing Magazine: <http://threewords.me/smashingmag>

Also celebrities (thanks to @Mazy) like Young Money's Lil Twist -
<http://threewords.me/liltwist>

I also did a test for using sentiment analysis as a monetization point, using
the Amazon Kindle (question was, "What do you think of the Amazon Kindle?")
which was displayed on top of the dashboard for all users, and it got
something like 7,000 responses. The responses weren't amazing, but it is
possible to improve them. There was zero targeting on whether or not the
"sponsored listing" was displayed, whereas Smashing Mag's results are clean
since the only people submitting words are people that know what Smashing
Magazine is.

~~~
duinote
I only see spams from most of the msg. I think you are doing a right thing
trying to capitalize while the hype is there. Based on alexa, it is dying out
already.

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paraschopra
Did you get any bids yet?

Not asking the offer price, just the number of bids (from HN).

~~~
markbao
I've gotten three or four.

~~~
gobongo
Lost count already?

~~~
ebaysucks
I have a friend who once talking about how he had "one or two" one night
stands in his life.

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roschdal
How much revenue is generated from Threewords.me? Is it even profitable?

Also, I'm wondering how the process of transferring the actual website would
go? Will the buyer usually take over the servers which the seller has setup?

~~~
citricsquid
Haha, hey everyone this guy thinks profitability with this matters! Everyone
point and laugh!

I highly doubt even Mark thinks this product has legs with monetisation, it's
a fad at best. He's clever for cashing in now, it'll be dead soon unless the
new owner works out how to expand.

~~~
PostOnce
Twitter is a pretty silly concept, and their valuation is non-comical.

~~~
citricsquid
Twitter isn't a silly concept, it's a global SMS.

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makeee
Does anyone know how much the 253,000 email addresses (userbase of threewords)
could be worth to a company that runs another social platform?

I imagine that, regardless of whether threewords continues to grow, a related
service (like formspring) could add threewords functionality to their own
service, then email the threewords userbase letting them know what's up, and
re-engaging them..

Is the response rate for those kind of emails pretty good, or would that not
be a huge factor in the sale price?

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sahillavingia
Making the bids public would definitely be a good idea (one person bids x,
person 2 bids x+500, etc).

~~~
jacquesm
No, it would not be a good idea at all.

Let's just for a second pretend that I'd be an interested party (I won't be
bidding).

I would assume that most of the people bidding are not 'players', I'd assume
that they would just try to get it for a song and a bit, the equivalent of
buying Manhattan from the Indians because they're not aware of what it's
worth.

Mark is a smart guy so he won't be going for that.

The second group of potential buyers would be more savvy and would bid higher,
they'd be outbidding each other bit by bit, probably in increments of 1,000
$US until they ran out of steam.

With the last moment of the bidding already announced the real players would
wait until the very last moment and would then bid based on what the highest
of the second group has bid using that as a way to guide their decision, in
the hope that nobody else would be bidding a similar amount.

In a 'blind' bid like this, assuming a party _really_ wants to get their hands
on it they will have to decide what it's worth to them to get it, rather than
to let the market do their valuation work for them. This may very well lead to
substantially higher bids.

If I were Mark I'd add two things (if he decides to make the bidding public,
which I would not advise him to do):

\- Extend the bidding with 15 or 30 minutes after every new highest bid

\- keep the identity of the bidders secret, just show the highest bid

Since he's already under way and it is difficult to change the rules once the
game has started I don't think that is a viable option any longer anyway.

~~~
healthyhippo
Sure, he could just run it like Swoopo.com and charge people for each bid they
make

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coolswan
OMG. Don't sell work it!! Work on it. You've gotten people to tag other
people. Think of the possibilities.

So much better than a support system (done and done) IMHO.

Of course, if you have no interest in working with social space stuff, then
okay, I can't argue with that. But the fact you launched this product means
there's something there you want to do.

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desigooner
I'm not sure of how big the bids are so far but have you thought of open
sourcing it?! The traffic is exhibiting decay as time goes by and only would
be a while before it hits the graveyard. Might as well give others a chance to
learn something from this project and tweak it to their ideas and relaunch it
in some form.

just my 0.02$

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socialmediaking
I understand you have time constraints and other things on your plate, but it
seems to me that you created an entirely new form of social interaction. I
think your site is in the same league as <http://formspring.me> (which has
$24m in funding).

I would hate for you to sell for 5 figures only to see a much higher valuation
in only a couple of years.

Your concept is well executed and if you have traffic, you should be able to
monetize without being too innovative. I like the idea of surveys or branded
pages.

Good luck though, with whatever you decide!

~~~
markbao
Thanks for your thoughts! I can't really say I'm having second thoughts, but
more like 1.5nd thoughts... I just don't know where to expand from here. The
concept is great and the virality is really cool, but... something just isn't
there.

~~~
socialmediaking
Something just isn't there, but only because you haven't added it yet...Your
idea works as a concept, it just needs to be tweaked.

If you don't get a price you like, keep the site, add advertisements and
collect data. As people's profiles fill up with qualities, you may be able to
determine what kind of ads people are likely to click on.

I also like the idea of selling companies a spot where people can comment on
their brand or different ideas. The site could evolve into a kind of instant
survey for concepts and ideas (from brands). I.E. They post an image of a new
design and the users can describe in 3 words what they think. It would allow a
company to get instant feedback and know if they have a homerun or not before
something is produced or fully developed.

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pclark
I wish the publication logos lit up when you mouse over'd on them. Just me?

~~~
markbao
Me too, but I only had 30 minutes to make that page. Ton of work today.

~~~
blhack
Please don't take offense to this, Mark, but if you only have 30 minutes to
work on this, then your priorities are _very much_ in the wrong place.

You're talking about doing something that could make you real-world money that
goes in the bank. Spend _all_ of your time selling threewords, then use the
money from that to fund your other ideas. Being "too busy" means that you're
doing something wrong.

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jcfrei
It's hard to estimate a reasonable price for this if you don't have any
revenues. Whereas you could usually discount future cash flows, in this case
you would need to estimate the goodwill - which probably means what you're
willing to pay for maintaining this site as a hobby.

BTW. does this page still get a lot of hits? I've seen on my past projects
(albeit on a much smaller scale) that those services usually spike for a few
days and then quickly die off - what are the current usage statistics?

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aaronbrethorst
Why not sell through Flippa?

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neworbit
He always has the option to go to Flippa later if he doesn't get the value he
wants here. From my limited experience, Flippa is kind of a liquidation market
more than a source for competitive bids. Your mileage may vary.

~~~
markbao
This, exactly.

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andrewcamel
Knowing the rate of page views would be good as well; having total page views
is a bit misleading.

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js4all
I think this is a great way to monetize your cool idea. Your site went viral
in a few days and still has this potential. Please let us know how this went.
We all have to think about monetizing our ideas this or other ways.

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EGreg
I am impressed by the amount of press coverage Mark got :)

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shankx
He deserved it because its difficult to generate that many page views in such
a short span of time. Plus its a great app!

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pghimire
Any thoughts on possible monetization strategies/revenue model?

