Transatlantic Cable : The world's most expensive greetings card

News that Excite@Home has paid a not-so-small fortune for an online greetings card company has added grist to the mill of all those who think that Web outfits are over-priced. But there are even sillier sums being bandied around for models' eggs, as Richard Baguley investigates...

A major theme of my columns from the US has been the incredible amount of money people are prepared to pay for things over here, and despite several months of falling share prices for high-tech stocks, some people seem prepared to keep paying out the big bucks for the promise of future profits. The latest deal that fits into this category only happened a few days ago, when the portal site and broadband Net connection company, Excite@Home, bought out the online greetings company Blue Mountain Arts (at http://www.bluemountain.com ). The terms of the deal were pretty generous: Excite@Home will cough-up shares worth about $430m and will also hand over $350m in cash (although the announcement didn't say how exactly you hand over that much cash - it would certainly fill an awful lot of shopping bags). But that's not all: the deal also includes a clause that gives the owners of Blue Mountain Arts an additional $270m if they reach performance targets. Now, Blue Mountain Arts may not be a name that you're familiar with, but it is an interesting example of how things have changed in California since the 1960s. The company was founded in 1971 by two hippies who wanted to help "people communicate their feelings through poetry and art". They produced posters, cards and books, but the company began to grow spectacularly when they started a new business offering free online greetings cards (including cards that feature the exquisite love poetry of Leonard Nimoy). They now claim to have over nine million unique visitors a month coming to their site and offer cards in nine languages. Excite@Home claims that the deal is all about expanding their reach: "For Excite@Home, this acquisition promises to be a significant platform for future growth in both narrow and broadband content to generate increases in registered users, @Home broadband subscribers and revenue," George Bell, president of Excite@Home, said. In other words: people who send online greetings cards are prime targets for Excite@Home's cable modem service, and that's what it's all about: using one part of the business to bring users to another and thus carving out market share in the long term. Excite@Home may never have turned a profit, but it's still happy to hand out large chunks of cash for companies that will help them get a bigger slice of the pie in future... Get your (human) eggs here... Online auctions are becoming a way of life, and many people in the US are auctioning things online for both business and personal use: a friend of a friend has a very profitable sideline in selling beanie babies over eBay. However, one Californian is planning to take this a little bit further by selling eggs from eight models to infertile couples. Ron Harris is a well-respected fashion photographer who has seemingly persuaded the models to auction off their eggs through his Web site (at http://www.ronsangels.com ) and is also planning a model sperm auction. He claims to have received over a million hits since the site was set up a month ago. Of course, his reasons aren't exactly altruistic: he gets 20 per cent of the final auction price and you have to pay a subscription fee of $24.95 a month to get involved in the auction. And not forgetting Ron's forthcoming book, 'Naked Power', which he claims will show "how you can get money, sex and power, when you know the underlying causes of why men and women think differently". Meanwhile, there are more and more bogus auctions appearing on eBay, with the usual slew of body parts, children and testicles being offered. One recent auction did attract more attention than usual though: the auction offered "15 African-American slaves" and attracted a top bid of $1,570,100 before eBay removed it...