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:<p><a href="http://www.manyniches.com/n00b-notes/my3words/" rel="nofollow">http://www.manyniches.com/n00b-notes/my3words/</a><p>2 years. I even registered the domain my3words.com.<p>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.<p>However, that doesn't change the bottom line. He executed. Worth-ful. I had the idea, but didn't execute. Worthless.<p>Hats off to Mark.
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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>Anyway, congrats on the success so far and good luck with things. My email is in my profile.
Glad to see this already submitted :)<p>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 <a href="http://supportbreeze.com" rel="nofollow">http://supportbreeze.com</a> and others).<p>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.
How can you sell something with no terms and conditions mentioned that he is selling, "Sale includes data, domain, brand."<p>And then continue to say, "We promise we won't spam" on the signup page?<p>How does that work then?
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.<p>Also, looking at alexa it seems as though the period of hyper fast growth is already a bit past:<p><a href="http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/threewords.me" rel="nofollow">http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/threewords.me</a><p>Still, it should fetch a pretty penny and to the right party it might be worth quite a lot of money.
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.<p>"Tell us your 3 favorite items at Applebee's ..."<p>"Thanks for trying the new filet mignon chalupa at Taco Bell. Describe it in 3 words ... "<p>"What 3 things are most important when choosing your next car? ..."<p>(I'm sure someone more creative could do better, but you get the idea)
How much revenue is generated from Threewords.me? Is it even profitable?<p>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?
Does anyone know how much the 253,000 email addresses (userbase of threewords) could be worth to a company that runs another social platform?<p>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..<p>Is the response rate for those kind of emails pretty good, or would that not be a huge factor in the sale price?
OMG. Don't sell work it!! Work on it. You've gotten people to tag other people. Think of the possibilities.<p>So much better than a support system (done and done) IMHO.<p>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.
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.<p>just my 0.02$
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 <a href="http://formspring.me" rel="nofollow">http://formspring.me</a> (which has $24m in funding).<p>I would hate for you to sell for 5 figures only to see a much higher valuation in only a couple of years.<p>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.<p>Good luck though, with whatever you decide!
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.<p>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?
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.