How Much Is Your Orkut Community Worth?

Despite the fact that Google controls the hosting of the forum (as well as its ultimate powers), that has not stopped one business from actually purchasing admin rights to one very popular forum on Orkut.

(Google Blogoscoped) Floripa, also known as Florianopolis, is the capital city of the state Santa Catarina in Brazil, and there is one Orkut community specifically for Floripa lovers. The community, titled "Eu AMO Floripa!" ("I LOVE Floripa"), assembled over 74,000 members over time. This size made it interesting for marketers - so interesting in fact that the original owner of the community, Bruno Unger, a guy in his mid-twenties, was able to "sell it off" to an agency for roughly $934 (2,000 Brazil reais), as Googlaxy informed me. The agency is now using the moderation rights that were transferred to them to push an event called "Floripa Tem" (a kind of sports/ music/ food/ fun festival to promote the city, if I understand it right).

Although this boils down to roughly USD 79 cents per user, buying a community for under a $1,000 may seem like a good marketing idea, especially if your company is located in either Brazil or India.

But if Bruno Unger could sell his forum to a company that seems to be (IMHO) spamming its members, I wonder if other people could potentially sell their forums out to respective buyers.

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