Is Auctioning a Little HR Community That Significant?

The eBay auction for HRM Today has gone from a single penny to over $2,000 in a week with over 1,400 hits and almost 50 people actively watching it through eBay. With three days left in the auction and numerous conversations about the sale, I am beginning to reflect on when we first started the site and how much I still want it to continue. Under this format, I have no influence over who can win and who won’t so I can be an observer like all of you and watch with anticipation.

A couple of my thoughts as we wind down here:

• I still would choose the auction format if I had to do it over again. It fits who Laurie and I are: transparent, entertaining and open to all comers. It forces the buyer to at least start the day by being transparent about how much they invested in the community up front.
• Most members seem to be waiting and seeing just like I am. I have been upfront with buyers: the individual or company that invests in HRM Today will be the determining factor on how well the site does. Laurie and I will give our support to the buyer but that only gives them so much credibility.
• It was a good opportunity to let people opt out if they wanted. So far, I only know of a couple of members out of over 1,200+ that have opted out. It is hard to tell aggregate since we have continued to gain members this week (+12 at last count). Had this been a traditional transaction, that wouldn’t have happened.
• There have been some very interesting bidders and even more interesting questions coming in from big companies, small companies and single individuals. Bidding has been light the last couple days so I wonder if people are waiting to pounce on it toward the end of the auction? Or maybe we’ve seen the most of it now?

We also have some very thoughtful contributions from members of the online HR community that I wanted to highlight (thanks to Laurie for rounding these up):

Jon Ingham of Strategic HCM starts off by writing “It will be interesting to see what happens to the community after this transaction, and how the community responds to being sold off (perhaps making it feel a little less communal?).”

Robin Majumdar covers the auction saying “Anything under $5K would be a real bargain to anyone with a bit of knowledge in the human resources area, and interested in possibly starting their own online business.”

Prem Rao wrote that “I respect their decision to sell it off as they have other priorities to concentrate on. HRM Today has over 1200 members and is one of the more active of such networks that are so common these days.”

Frank Roche at KnowHR has a different take writing “I don’t like being sold. I joined that club because I understood a certain set of rules. I knew the founder. I spent days brooding about it. Then I quit.”

Sharon from AIM Group notes in her coverage “We first met them both at SHRM’s 2009 conference, where they were two of a panel of four HR bloggers, guiding other human resource professionals to successful blogging.”

MediaJobsDaily posted a quick note mentioning “Laurie told us backstage at the Circus that she’d be happy if the thing fetched $5. And hell, we were totally planning to put a $5 bid on it on day 1, which was Wednesday, but then we forgot until today.”

HR Minion graciously covers it adding “Lance and Laurie have worked very hard to create an awesome online community and they know that someone out there will be able to take it to the next level. Do you think that person is you?”

Cheezhead offered its coverage saying “The site chose eBay as its place of auction in order to keep with the online community’s vision of elevating the human resources profession through the use of Web 2.0 technology.”

John Sumser sums it up by writing “The sale of HRMToday.com is going to set a number of precedents. Using eBay as the sales front creates a public and measurable benchmark. Any community valuations in the future are going to be tied to the results of this transaction. If the number is low enough, the effect will be to chill any community investment for a long time.”

Always great posts from the great people in the community. Check out those posts and give your take on them over there or in the comment section here.