Retweet.com
http://retweet.com/
Sold at Public Auction
$250,000
Bidding History: 45 bids- Started:
- Wed, Feb 17, 2010
- Completed:
- Wed, Mar 10, 2010
Website Statistics and Collected Data
Site Visibility
| Google PageRank | 5 |
|---|---|
| Alexa Rank | 65,557 |
| Links in Google | 58 |
| Links in Yahoo! | 4,235 |
Domain
| Registration Date | 14th May, 2007 |
|---|
Compete Stats
| Compete Ranking | 11,915 |
|---|---|
| Trust | 3 |
SEMRush Stats
| SEMRush Rank | 7,783,062 |
|---|---|
| Keywords in Google | 3 |
Site Content
| Possible Copies Found | 5 (view) |
|---|
Description
What is a ReTweet?
Anyone familiar with Twitter.com knows what a ReTweet is. Defined simply, a ReTweet is a re-publishing of another Twitter user's content. For example, a user might post RT @misterjohn to indicate they are resubmitting content that was originally posted by the Twitter user misterjohn. In fact, the most active Twitter users ReTweet content as many as hundreds of times every day, providing a public gesture of their approval of someone else's content.
There are some truly remarkable things about the term ReTweet. First, it was created by users of Twitter – NOT by the creators of Twitter. Second, like “Googling” something has become synonymous with using a search engine, “ReTweeting” has become synonymous with the act of spreading content virally. Both of these factors contribute to the incredible brand strength of ReTweet.com.
Our Vision for ReTweet.com
As the founders of ReTweet.com, our vision has always been that it would be most powerful in the hands of a major media outlet or advertising network. We had the foresight to anticipate the Twitter growth trend, acquire ReTweet.com as soon as the term started being used by Twitter users, and then created a website and suite of supplemental technologies which would position ReTweet as a future leader in the real-time online news market.
We now live in a world where for the first time in history, real-time news is truly viable. Because of technologies like Twitter, Facebook, and others which engender crowd sourced content creation and viral growth capabilities, the stage is set for the face of news to change forever. We at ReTweet believe our brand can be the catalyst for realizing that change.
The Current ReTweet.com
ReTweet.com was launched in August 2009 by our small but skilled team. As anticipated, response to the launch of ReTweet was enormous.
Online media outlets and others who were “on the pulse” of the social web immediately recognized the awesome potential of ReTweet. That's when the phone calls, large traffic spikes, and emails started rolling in.
We received correspondence and coverage from Twitter, the New York Times, TechCrunch, Mashable and others, as well as challenges from TweetMeme, a venture funded and fast growing European startup also interested in the potential of utilizing Twitter as a medium for delivering ReTweeted content. All of the attention was focused on two central questions -
“Where did you guys come from?”
and...
“What are your plans?”
ReTweet as a News Service
ReTweet's growing popularity and existing technology infrastructure have already set the stage for ReTweet to become a major medium for news syndication. ReTweet's real power lies in winning the race to real time news – everything has now become about immediacy – news, social exchanges, and status updates.
Visionary online companies have already begun racing to meet this demand as of March 2009, when Facebook unveiled a redesign that gave prominent placement to a real-time status update feature, very similar to what Twitter officers. Several weaks later, and Facebook – though it currently enjoys 300 million active users – has entrenched itself as a direct competitor to the micro-blogging upstart. Couple this with recent deals Twitter has signed with Google, Microsoft and Yahoo to incorporate real-time updates in those companies' search results, it is clear that many smart people at the top have decided real-time information is the wave of the future.
ReTweet Search
ReTweet automatically aggregates content based on the number of user ReTweets. This content is categorized and searchable.
ReTweet Categoric Top Ranking
ReTweet top-ranks the hottest trending stories, on both a category specific and global basis.
ReTweet Buttons and ReTweet URL Shortener
The ReTweet button has been installed on thousands of blogs. The power of the ReTweet button is that it is what empowers Twitter users who find content anywhere that a ReTweet button appears to grant their stamp of approval and spread the story to their own following. This allows the news that people want to top rank.
In addition, the ReTweet button utilizes it's own URL shortener, RT.nu, which has shortened nearly 90M links to date. This allows for tracking of the full syndication of the content – where clicks and page views are coming from, traffic trends, and more.
ReTweet Growth Trends
When reviewing the numbers and press coverage around ReTweet.com, one would never expect that the idea was birthed and launched by a small team of young technology enthusiasts with no marketing budget.
Our vision has always been to put the power of ReTweet in the hands of a larger media outlet that could truly leverage it to revolutionize news. We believe that the numbers provide a proof of concept, showing that if such incredible results can be achieved by a small team launching the website on a budget , ReTweet in the hands of the right organization would be an incredible asset.
ReTweet.com growth on Compete.
Actual traffic to ReTweet.com is shown on compete as growing steadily (30% per month) since formal launch in August 2009.
Compete.com shows over 650,000 unique visitors to Retweet.com in December 2009.
Stat Counter – ReTweet Network
The ReTweet.com content network which includes blogs and websites where the Retweet.com buttons appear. This shows over 15 million unique visitors in December 2009, and more than 10 million first time visitors.
Summary
ReTweet has received tremendous response, despite being launched on a minimal budget as a side project. We believe that our experience in launching ReTweet has been an incredibly successful test, definitively proving the viability and market demand for a real-time news service brand that leverages Twitter and associated content networks.
In the hands of the right person(s) with the resources to properly leverage the service, we believe ReTweet.com is poised to become a powerful asset for an existing company, individual, or any other person, interested in moving to the online news market in order to create new venues for ad sales.
Revenue Details
We have never tried to monetize Retweet as it was built from the beginning to be acquired. We are a team built primarily of developers, not salesman.
Traffic Details
We track the retweet traffic using StatCounter. The unique reach ( site + button distribution ) is around 12,000,000 monthly visitors with 26,000,000 page loads.
Since the button acts as an iFrame ( page ) of our site, StatCounter analytics does not show hits to the website homepage exclusively.
Compete.com reported over 600,000 unique visitors for each of the last two months.
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Comments 121 public, 16 deleted
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Claimed Traffic
| Page Views Per Month | 26,000,000 |
|---|---|
| Uniques Per Month | 12,000,000 |
Claimed Financials
| No revenue is being claimed. |
|---|
| No profit is being claimed. |
Monetization Methods
| Advertising Sales | No |
|---|---|
| Product or Service Sales | No |
| Affiliate Income | No |
Site Uniqueness
- Content is claimed to be unique
- Design is claimed to be unique
Seller
Attachments 3
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Retweet General Outline and Analytical Overview
pdf file
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retweet network stats ( StatCounter )
png file
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Basic Retweet Architecture
png file
Tags 4
Contextual Help
- The winner of this listing will be required to pay a 0% success fee to Flippa.
More Information ^ - Ownership transfer is safest when using Escrow.com (more information)
Seller also accepts payment using: PayPal, Electronic Transfer ^ - These attachments have been added to the listing by the seller to give extra information to potential buyers ^
- The seller has added these tags to the listing to describe the site ^
Please PM me the reserve and also if you have a BIN in mind.
Please PM me a reserve and BIN as well.
Please PM me a reserve and BIN as well.
same here please.
Very interested in the site. Can you PM me the following information please:
- detailed breakdown of costs: staff, suppliers, technology costs (as well as copies of accounts)
- software architecture documentation and server configuration
- access to google analytics (my email for analytics is inghamb87(at)googlemail.com)
- a phone number so we can discuss the deal further
If you need a few days to compile this sort of information, let me know. I'm happy to sign an NDA/Non-compete.
Thanks very much,
Regards,
Chris
-
Please pm me the reserve and the BIN. Also what the monthly costs are and any revenue it makes.
Thanks
Please PM me a reserve and BIN as well. Thanks for your time.
Please PM me a reserve and BIN as well. Thanks for your time.
Regards,
Wyatt
Please PM me a reserve and BIN as well. Thanks for your time. mn
PM me the reserve and your BIN price please
PM me the reserve and BIN as well. Thanks.
Hi
same same, bin and reserve please!
One of the best sites with great future I have seen on Flippa. Goodluck with the sale.
As with the others, interested in the reserve and BIN price.
pm me fees u want to continue operation for new owner. Thanks
Same here: PM BIN and Reserve. Thanks.
please PM reserve & BIN.
Also can you please comment on tweetmeme vs. retweet and what the new owner can do gain marketshare ...
PM RESERVE AND BIN
thankyou
Please, PM reserve and BIN. Very interested
interested as well, can you PM reserve and BIN. thanks!
Please PM me a reserve and BIN
me too please. thx
PM me reserve and BIN price
Please PM me your BIN
Can you please explain the competition in more detail between you and tweetmeme, it seems tweetmeme is alot more popular but who created the service first?
Please PM reserve & BIN
Can you give me access to google analytics (my email for analytics is romain.richer(at)gmail.com)
researve pls
Please PM me a reserve and BIN as well.
ditto here.. pls pm me details
Good luck Kevin! :)
please pm me the reserve & BIN, thank you
Reserve please :)
I, too, would like the BIN and reserve. Thanks!
Please PM Bin
hi please PM me the BIN and reserve as well.. I own a site which is very similar to this and i am interested in buying this site. Kindly also let me know regarding what are the best ways to outdo the competition which you stated above.
Instead of asking what 38 others before me have asked, can you please post the BIN and reserve publicly, along with information asked about server infrastructure etc.
Please PM me a reserve and BIN as well.
Could you give me access to google analytics (scottlindsay at clickondesigns.com)
Please PM me a reserve and a BIN if you have one.
Please, PM the reserve. Thank you.
One thing we forgot to mention is, the sale of Retweet.com includes its URL shortner RT.NU that has shortened over 97,000,000 URL's to date.
Please PM me a reserve and a BIN if you have one. What is the monthly cost of running the website (infrastructure/employees)
Thanks,
Paul
This will be the biggest Flippa sale of all time. I am glad I am here to witness it :)
A recent NYT's article referencing Retweet.com, published Feb, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/11/technology/personaltech/11basics.html
Here is some Q & A from a Private Message:
Q: What is the technology stack behind retweet.com?
A: Retweet.com is deployed on the Amazon Elastic Cloud Compute infrastructure using standard LAMP Fedora Images.
- The site is developed using PHP and CodeIgnitor Framework for Model / View / Controller design pattern.
- The database is deployed on a standard MySQL instance, latest build.
- Presently we are running two mirrored EC2 Web Servers that handle all front-end page and button requests.
- A single master database server handles all data requests and also receives input from the Twitter API via a PHP based cron job.
- The master database is synchronized against a single slave database with identical system architecture for redundancy.
That gives you 4 EC2 servers in the Amazon cloud.
Q: What kind of infrastructure is needed to run the site?
A: The site can be deployed against a single LAMP server of your liking. Scalability is accomplished by adding additional servers and disk space.
We specifically built retweet to be very efficiently managed, therefore only a single part time server administrator can now manage the Retweet.com platform with minimal effort.
Q: What kind of after sale support will you provide?
A: We will provide full disclosure and consulting regarding source code and system architecture for a period of three months after transferring ownership of the site. No further development will be done by our team, although we will refer the buyer to a very talented Senior developer that has worked with the retweet.com code.
Q: What is the reason for selling?
A: As mentioned in the overview, we built retweet.com from the beginning to eventually have it acquired / sold to the right buyer. We have taken retweet as far as we can with our resources and feel that now is a good time to let someone else take it to the next level.
Q: What are the time and operational expenses to run retweet.com?
A: This largely depends on if you plan to further develop retweet.com to help it become a top real-time news destination on the web. ( obviously recommended, we have plenty of ideas and suggestions )
Currently, retweet.com costs only about $550 a month to keep up and running. We utilize 4 highly efficient Amazon EC2 web servers to help optimize the cost of bandwidth.
Mashable Just posted a story on the sale of retweet.com:
http://mashable.com/2010/02/17/retweet-com-put-up-for-sale/
Please PM me a reserve and BIN
Have you no analytics reports with real site usage? As you mentioned, the statistics for button loads are included in the statcounter report which bloats the numbers. I'm sure anyone seriously considering making an investment in buying this site would appreciate realistic figures of unique viewers and page loads to the home page and other parts of the site.
DanSEO thank you for your comment, and we apologize for not offering an exact break down of the homepage traffic exclusively. When the StatCounter was implemented by one of our programmers it was included on all pages of the website.
We estimate that the home page traffic is anywhere from 150,000 uniques - ( 600,000+ according to compete.com stats ).
It's also important to note that our traffic is 100% organic as retweet.com has a marketing budget of $0. No money has been spent advertising the website, the retweet button, the wordpress plugin, and to build any partnerships.
Any money spent advertising would tremendously increase its already large user base.
Hopefully this helps answer some of your questions.
Please PM BIN. Thanks
Plz PM me the reserve and BIN. Thank you,
Pls PM me the reserve and BIN. Thank you
can you discuss the support involved in running the site currently? time? staff?
very nice design and arch... lovely auction!
Are there any trademark issues with the domain?
Did you ever pay out the $10,000 from the launch contest? That's not still owed to someone is it?
elitweb, there are no trademark issues with retweet.
You can find the Twitter and Mesiab Labs ( our company ) Retweet trademarks by going to the TESS database here: http://tr.im/OEZx and searching Retweet
Twitter and Mesiab Labs can both be granted their trademarks for Retweet as they are claiming different uses. Retweet.com trademark filing here: http://tr.im/OF44
Although It is most likely that the trademark office will deny both trademarks as they have already denied twitters attempt to trademark 'tweet' .
If the trademark filing is granted, it will be transferred to the new buyer.
Dan Grossman, The $10,000 was to be awarded if retweet.com reached 1 million unique visitors to its homepage within 30 days.
Although the competition was a great success and generated much online buzz, we did not reach the 1 million goal. Therefore there is no money owed.
Thanks for the questions.
silverclick, we currently have one part time developer that makes sure retweet.com stays up and running. We spent the last 6 months making sure the retweet website is extremely efficient and reliable.
We do strongly recommend on-going development / additional features to help push the website to its full potential. We can recommend a highly talented developer that has worked with the retweet.com code.
( We also have many ideas to improve the website that will be exchanged with the buyer upon transfer of ownership, if interested )
I thought I remembered the counter on the contest getting there, and the contest page currently says "A winner is being determined, please stay tuned"
retweet... can you split the traffic between: homepage/buttons/shortened urls ?
Dan Grossman, Our developer that was in charge of the traffic display number put up the StatCounter code ( which like we mentioned is a combination of retweet button distribution + onsite traffic ). The web designer in charge of designing the competition page, was initially unaware of this confusion.
The competition's goal was to get 1 M visitors to the retweet.com website, this goal was obviously never met ( confirmed by public traffic sites like compete.com ) and thus the competition was ended, removed from display, and no winner was announced. There is no $10,000 currently owed.
Great Question! Let us know if you have any more.
net_head, Our best estimated monthly breakdown.
OnSite Traffic: 150,000 - ( 600,000+ uniques Compete.com tracking )
Button Distribution: 11,500,000 - 12,000,000+ uniques
RT.NU onsite ( shortened URL homepage ): 30,000 uniques
RT.NU urls shortened to-date: 98,000,000+ ( most urls are shortened through 3rd party applications using the rt.nu API )
Also:
Nearly 5,000 Retweet.com WordPress plugins have been installed on WP blogs with an average of 20+ new installations daily. http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/retweet/stats/
So far $0 has been spent marketing retweet.com
thanks. i meant how many urls you distribute shortened (calls per day)?
Or if that isn't clear by wanted to know how many times the short and URL is used . or better put, How many times is a short and URL used on a day overall
Hmm, that is a good question I'd have to run that by our main developer.
You can go to http://rt.nu and see how many url's are being shortened in real-time ( top right of the website )
Regarding Trade Mark for retweet, who filed first you or twitter. Thanks in advance
andwhen,
Twitter's filing came in August 14th and ours came in August 18th. This will play no role in approving the trademark though as they are filed as unrelated service marks.
Also, Retweet.com has been a registered domain name for over 2 years, much before the popularity of Twitter itself.
can you PM me the BIN ?
We noticed there was a seed investment of $40k according to CrunchBase. Is this debt paid off? Also, we are interested in BIN if there is any.
Aspidov, there is no debt as this $40,000 was contributed by one of the current owners. There is currently no set BIN, although we are accepting offers.
Tosellyourwebsite is a SPAMMER. Look at his profile 700+ comments in one day on Flippa all the same. Report him and remove his post. Don't let him spread his junk!
Thank you for bringing that to our attention yourassassin! That comment and user profile was reported to Flippa.
Note: Retweet.com will be down temporarily as we prepare the platform to be transferred to a new buyer at the end of the auction.
Interested in purchasing this website, but I won't play the last second auction game. Please message me if a BIN price is set.
Please send me the BIN, if there is one.
Is there a BIN and a Reserve set. Please send me a PM.
I have the budget already placed my BIN, accordingly.
Regards
Al.
Is there are BIN or a Reserve price yet ?
vl.
I haven't got an answer yet, and my bid hasn't been approved are there any solid reasons for this situation.
Please clarify.
Regards
Al.
precious007, your bid was accepted but has now been passed up by a higher bidder. Sending a PM now with BIN info
Can you please PM with BIN also? Thanks, James.
Very nice auction. Love it that the first bid was $5... hopeful ;)
You seem to be missing some significant RT trends.
How are you consuming the Twitter API? You mention a cron job, are you periodically calling the search API? Or are you using the streaming API?
Do you have an elevated access agreement for either? If so, what are the terms?
please pm the BIN info as well when you get a chance. thanks so much!
Please PM the BIN information. Thanks
react2k
Our site does not aggregate all Twitter RT trends, only those that link to a story elsewhere on the internet. Retweet.com is a news aggregator, not a Twitter trends tool ( although, a lot of times these go hand in hand ). Thus we are not "missing RT trends", we are ignoring those that don't relate to a linked story.
We are consuming the Twitter API by periodically calling the search API. We do not use the streaming API because there is a limit that prevents us from gathering as much Data as we can get by repeatedly calling the search API.
There is not an elevated access agreement besides a whitelisted IP allowing 20,000 api calls per hour.
Thanks for the send the BIN info. But it seems to high for my budget letting the bigger players for now.
Lets see how thing go and I might place another BID.
Regards
Al.
Does retweet.com have a Twitter account in good standing
andwhen, Twitter suspended the @retweet account to help protect from a potential Intellectual Property claim from us in the future and because they didn't want users confused thinking that the account was managed by twitter internally.
Will you take a BIN of $200,000 right now?
In2WinDomainer, Please contact us by PM
one suggestion: click "recollect site stats" so it may update, the current alexa rank is far better at 53,000
If Twitter wins the TM for "retweet" can Twitter force retweet.com to stop using the retweet.com domain
Can you tell us why you have not monetized your site yet if it gets so much traffic.
Hi, could you give a breakdown of the traffic by browser? i.e google chrome or iphone mobile thanks
websitepro, our experience is not the monetization of website traffic.. rather the building of technology and web applications.
We built retweet.com from the beginning to be acquired by a larger company.
HI,
regarding the operating costs: you mention around $500 per month. Does it include the mysql enterprise license for each server, or just the Amazon Cloud fees?
This is the total cost of running the site.
We do not use mysql enterprise
I do not have any question to ask. It is my first day at Flippa and your story is quite inspiring. Good luck to you Retweet and to all bidders. Aldo i am not in the major league, i will keep an eye on this ''auction''!
Oh my God, $152,000 bid price? Definitely out of my reach :-))
from $5 to this. Impressive.
I dont understand how this happened , the site was at its reserve at around 65,000 if i remember correctly .
so why would bidder bid 85,000 one day and then place a bid of 152,000.
am i missing something.
As until the reserve is reached i can understand how someone would place more than one bid even consecutively.
Unless he just wants the site soo bad he wants not one more bid to be placed. That could be it.
By the way this is the best auction here on flippa . Good luc with the sale and well done
Regards Nick
Bidder 32 $152,000 Today
Bidder 32 $85,000
i think bidder 32 likely had a max bid of more than 152k and someone else bid 152k, great site here, not sure how people would monitize this site though
Good thing he prepaid the success fee! (lol just a joke, I know the cap is $497)