RSSCalendar Put Up For Auction on eBay

On occasion you find a startup that truly hopes and wishes to stand as a solo success – a mega success, even. More often, though, you come across businesses which look to build themselves up enough to look attractive to bigger fish. So that when they prowl “The Valley” in their best suits and dresses, they’ll have a decent chance of selling themselves off for a good amount of green.

Then there is the class of Web creations that neither strike gold nor get their big break (get bought). For them the way to get out without losing their shirts and skirts is put themselves up for auction. On eBay.

The latest entity to be put up in such an auction is RSSCalendar, a fairly popular online service that specializes in collaborative date/appointment keeping. The website alleges to maintain a registered user base of 25,000 and is host to 800,000 unique visitors per month. It also claims to see 2.3 million page views every month. The starting price for the complete package (website, userbase, software, and source) is $50,000. As of 10:30AM EST, there were no bidders.

eBay auctions of Internet establishments isn’t entirely uncommon. Kiko, an online calendar service as well (and one we reviewed here last year), was in fact the prize in an eBay sale months before we even made note of its existence. The website was introduced at what appears the standard starting price for moderately priced websites, $50k, and sold for an impressive $258,100. A third startup, called SynapseLife, consisting of a suite of “productivity applications”, put itself up for the same amount, only to sell for $60k.

It’s no mystery why some startups end up selling on eBay. The whole arrangement makes for a quick, simple transaction and considerable savings. Introduce the site at an enticing, reasonable value, and just see where it goes. Very straightforward.

In a way, however, one can’t help but think selling off in such a standardized, wholesale venue cheapens the product put on the block. Sure, one could argue that we shouldn’t make too much of some of the Web 2.0 creations out there and that the perspective offered by the odd eBay sale allows at least some in the Internet-based world to keep from getting too comfortable up on Cloud Nine. But when one regularly reads the values of prized Web-based entities today, one can’t help but think an eBay auction of Internet businesses as kind of a last-resort, cut-your-losses type of sale.

The auction for RSSCalendar ends June 12. In the spirit of the eBay auction system, we close by saying: Happy Bidding!

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