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Last Great Internet Bubble Auction

Posted by timothy on from the aerons-are-comfy dept.

jlouderb writes "At least that's what they are calling it. Cowan Alexander is getting ready to auction off the assets of MP3.com (now owned by CNet) on March 10th and 11th. The items up for sale include lots of those dumb Herman Miller Aeron chairs that were so popular, along with servers and notebooks that are probably hopelessly out of date. The best part, though -- a 1997 yellow hummer and a 1994 "Fat Boy" Harley. Plus, they've got pictures!"

6 of 432 comments (clear)

  1. Slashdot: home of expert furniture critics? by koreth · · Score: 5, Informative
    The prices might have been ridiculously high, but those Aeron chairs are pretty comfortable. I got one as a gift way back when they first came out, before they were hot items -- benefits of having relatives in the interior design biz -- and I still use it every day. I can stay comfortably seated for marathon coding or gaming sessions with no backache or sore muscles afterwards, which isn't true of most other chairs I've had over the years. (Yes, I do take breaks ordinarily, but on occasion I'll be deep into something and not notice how much time has gone by, a feeling I'm sure is familiar to many Slashdotters.)

    So by all means knock the fad surrounding it, but it's pretty silly to knock a perfectly good piece of furniture just because it became fashionable for a brief time.

  2. MP3.com timeline by dtio · · Score: 5, Informative

    Here's a quick, brief MP3.com timeline:

    July 1999 - MP3.com floats, raising $344 million.

    August 2000 - MP3.com pays Sony $20m in damages for copyright infringement

    September 2000 - MP3.com pays Universal $250m in damages for copyright infringement

    May 2001 - Vivendi Universal announces intention to purchase MP3.com

    Vivendi-Universal's former chief executive Jean-Marie Messier bought MP3.com for $372m in 2001 and integrated it into Vivendi Universal Net. The rise of file-sharing, the dot.com crash and perceptions of MP3.com as a 'sell-out' resulted in the investment failing to meet its potential.

    November 14, 2003

    MP3.com to close

    CNET has acquired MP3.com and will be shutting down the downloading service. According to an email sent to MP3.com subscribers, the site will no longer be available as of December 2nd. According to the same email, CNET is planning to launch a service in the future.

    Feb 25, 2004

    Complete Liquidation of 100,000 sq ft facility - 100s of Servers (Sun, Compaq, HP, & Dell) Clarion EMC Storage - 100s of PCs, Notebooks, Printers - 100s of Herman Miller Aeron Chairs - 10,000 sq ft health club - Pool Table, Foosball, Video Arcade Games, Ping Pong. Artwork, Collectable Musical instruments, Contemporary Furniture & more...

  3. Re:Questions need to be answered! by mcmonkey · · Score: 5, Informative
    Does all This Stuff come with the hat and the giant Pez?

    Just a heads up, the giant Pez container just has many packs of normal Pez inside, not the giant Pez candies we crave.

  4. Re:Questions need to be answered! by tedtimmons · · Score: 5, Informative

    I dunno what Pootie is/was. Behind that rack are probably some Rimage CD burners. DAM CDs anyone?

    "this thing" is just an artsy piece. I always snickered, because it looks like a condom. The silver stuff is a stretchy fabric. It doesn't go up and down, even though it looks like it might.

    "this stuff". Heh. I don't know whose office that was. Those desks are really cool- the two sections are adjustable. There's a crank so you can bump them up and down.

    The rocket ship is from the College Tour, where Goo Goo Dolls showed their reliance on ProTools.

    MP3.com died because they lacked a solid business plan.

    -ted, at mppp from July 99 to Jan 03.

  5. MP3 Independent Artists alive and well by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    The MP3 Independent Artist database continues to be maintained by Trusonic.com which was a business subsidiary of MP3.com. Many of the artists granted permission to transfer their material to that business and therefore it has not been lost as widely reported.

    The Independent Artists enrolled in the Trusonic music and messaging programs are receiving regular royalty checks.

  6. Lots of computers by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    MP3.com handled 1.2 megabits per second of traffic during the peak of the day and never got below 300/400 megabits per second. This translates to the delivery of over 3 Terabytes of music in a month to the community.

    MP3.com also served up over 5 million page views per day and had over 2 million media files and 250,000 artists.

    MP3.com provided daily statistics to all of the artists and updated several hundred charts in over 300 genres of music on a daily basis.

    All of this was done reliably. MP3.com was one of the faster web sites on the Internet.

    Speed and scale requires a distributed computing solution which is exacltly what MP3.com pretty bright engineering team built. Everything was replicated and built in clusters. Distribution tools were automated so that everything remained in sync and operational metrics were extremely detailed.

    A lot of the people at MP3.com did a terrific job, some made some important legal errors.