Selling MetaFilter

February 7, 2002 10:03 PM

I was just reading the "About MeFi" page and was struck by the quote "If you'd like to partner with MetaFilter, license the code, buy it outright, or hire me to build a similar site, email me and we can discuss terms." Would you really sell your baby, Matt? And at what cost/under which circumstances? Would all the old-school MeFi'ers be pissed? Just curious.
posted by Ufez Jones to MetaFilter-Related at 10:03 PM (18 comments total)

sportsfilter is a product of licensed mefi code and paid-for mattage.
posted by moz at 10:17 PM on February 7, 2002

Indeed. It is a high-mattage site. 100 matts at least.
posted by kindall at 10:31 PM on February 7, 2002

Sorry, moz. I should have Bolded "buy it outright", b/c that was the point. And, btw, was Sportsfilter paid-for? I think Matt's one of the eight founding bros of it.
posted by Ufez Jones at 10:34 PM on February 7, 2002

Sportsfi owners are jacknose, msacheson, lescour, kirkaracha, rcade, justgary and myself. Matt is our technical mixmaster.
posted by owillis at 10:40 PM on February 7, 2002

Oh, and it's about 1.21 jigo-matts!
posted by owillis at 10:41 PM on February 7, 2002

but, owillis, was there any monetary exchange? and is Matt the #2 out of respect or what?
posted by Ufez Jones at 10:47 PM on February 7, 2002

We paid Matt to build and setup the site for us, yes. He's #2 for respect, like mafia style.
posted by owillis at 10:54 PM on February 7, 2002

Any way us curious parties could get a price on that? Probably not, but it's worth a shot, no? Plus, the point of my post has officially been hijacked (and i don't say that in a mad way, b/c i helped hijack it). I just hope when Matt sees it he feels like commenting on my original question.
posted by Ufez Jones at 10:59 PM on February 7, 2002

Any way us curious parties could get a price on that?

We paid him one milllllllllion dollar...

=)
posted by justgary at 11:27 PM on February 7, 2002

Any way us curious parties could get a price on that?

Like it says in the about page, email me and we can discuss terms. It all depends on what you want. It's a tad expensive, but it requires a lot of my time and the code's build on three years of tinkering.

In regards to the buy it outright thing, I'd sell my grandmother if it meant I could retire for life at the age of 29.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 12:03 AM on February 8, 2002

Hmmm. I've been in the market for a late-model grandparent lately...
posted by kokogiak at 12:18 AM on February 8, 2002

million two for the irish grandmother.
posted by clavdivs at 8:27 AM on February 8, 2002

I've been trying to convinced the company that puts up my blog to buy the MetaFilter code for about three months now. As I understand it it's not at all expensive, considering all the choc-a-bloc years that went into it.

There really isn't anything else like it, in terms of readability, ease of use, registration and general functionality.

I hope to convince them sometime soon. Everybody who spends an hour on MetaFilter - even the money men - is impressed by the way it's made, how well it works and how cool it looks.
posted by MiguelCardoso at 9:01 AM on February 8, 2002

How much for the women?
posted by Kafkaesque at 9:02 AM on February 8, 2002

what is granny's user number?
posted by danOstuporStar at 9:30 AM on February 8, 2002

A mailing list was set up quite a while ago to put together a open-source(?) PHP version of MeFi, but activity died there in October. I thought it was a good idea, but somehow it lost steam.
posted by misterioso at 9:35 AM on February 8, 2002

There are MeFi clones around.
posted by rodii at 9:56 AM on February 8, 2002

Yeah, but I doubt that any of the clones are as fine-tuned and polished as the original. Over two years of tweaking (with high traffic) would do that. After all, it has been worked over quite heavily... especially lately (damned busy server).
posted by mkn at 10:55 AM on February 8, 2002