Kiwi developer selling a Web 2.0 app on eBay
My NZ 2.0 buddy Ben Nolan
is selling one of his web apps, bubbletwo, on eBay.
There he is pictured on the
left, pretending he's zooming down the Silicon Valley highways in a Ferarri (which
may yet happen if he sells his mapping startup zoomin.co.nz).
Ben whipped up bubbletwo recently and he describes it as a "Web 2.0 Instant Blogging Site". He's currently taking bids on eBay for sole rights to the app. He wrote on eBay:
"I'm selling bubbletwo.com. You will get full ownership of the domain name, the ruby on rails application that powers bubbletwo, all html, css and the database.
The site was released yesterday and has been visited by just under 200 users. Bubbletwo lets people create an instant blog. Its kind of similair to Shorttext or Writeboard.
If you win the auction (the reserve is just enough for me to buy a macbook pro and a 24" Dell monitor) I'll send you an agreement to transfer over the IP. I will also help you move bubbletwo over to your own colocated server (I use layeredtech.com for my hosting). After that - you're on your own.
I expect that with a decent amount of promotion and a little luck - you could earn back the reserve price within a year using Google Ads."
Now in the interests of full disclosure I have to admit I have something to gain if Ben is successful. If he manages to sell his app on eBay, then I get his old Mac mini :-) I'm easily bribed, as you can see :-) But also I like promoting my fellow Wellingtonians. Go Ben!
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I don't quite get the big deal about instant blogs. If you want to write a piece, it's simpel as pie to start a blog. But for one piece?
I see what you mean Saul. But just like with 'feed grazing' and the concept of temp feeds, there may just be some uses for temp blogs too. Basically it just gives you a means to create a permalinked item when and where you need it. The use case Ben gave me is if you lose your laptop at a conference, create an instant post and then write the URL on a whiteboard.
I guess so. I'm not sure how broad the application of this concept is though. That being said, it's a simple enough application that maybe it doesn't need to.
I really like the app. The problem, however, is that it may becom full of splogs.
I have noticed that URLs don't become links automatically, perhaps in order to avoid spam.
It is a simple and elegant app. I'm not sure about the ad-based business model, but as a platform for experimenting with how simple you can make blog software it might be interesting.
I had the highest bid (US$660) when the auction completed today, but was not enough to make his reserve. However, I do hope that he is up to talking further with me about what would make the software worth more.