Blog chronicles engineering challenges of large online networks.

What’s it like building technology for a business that sees over 300 million unique visitors each month? A new blog will help shed some light.

Oversee.net’s engineering team has just started a new blog called Regularly Expressed.

In one of the first blog posts, Oversee.net Director of Technology and Program Management for Monetization Terrence Lui discusses the traffic the company deals with:

“…Oversee.net manages one of the biggest networks on the internet. In any given month, Oversee.net sees over 300 million unique users. It processes in excess of 2.5 billion events. It has over 10 million domains under management. And because it is a global company, Oversee.net’s network is operational 24/7/365. These are big numbers. Because of this, we have had to develop innovative solutions to reach this scale.”

The goal of the blog is to reach out to customers and other companies facing similar data challenges to those of Oversee.net.

If the company has built customized systems for handling lots of data, it should consider commercializing them by licensing the technology to ISVs. There’s money to be made.

Nuthin’ But Net objects to how money will be split.

Now that Escom, LLC has a $13 million buyer for its domain name Sex.com, the bickering over money can begin.

The $13 million sale of Sex.com is still on, pending court approval. But creditor Nothin’ But Net has filed a motion (pdf) asking for some of the proceeds to be set aside while it argues how much each party should get.

Nuthin’ But Net (NBN) doesn’t want the key creditors to get penalty interest. It also accuses investor Mike Mann of “self-dealing”. In its objection, attorneys for NBN write:

Mann, through a series of self-dealing transactions, essentially gave away Escom’s most valuable rights to iEntertainment (i.e., to himself) and then had Escom “buy back” those rights from his wholly owned and controlled subsidiary, iEntertainment, in exchange for a $2.5 million secured note (the “iEntertainment Note”). The ultimate, and clearly intended result of this shell game, was to allow Mann to reap a disproportional recovery upon Escom’s sale of its assets, primarily at the expense of NBN, which the Debtor presently owes approximately $2,337,562.39, but which NBN will not recover if Mann’s self-dealing is sanctioned.

Mann filed a response disputing NBN’s allegations.

It’s likely that the court will approve the $13 million sale, but it may be a while before Escom’s creditors settle the exact amounts that each party receives.

Brady requested a number of documents related to Oversee.net’s operations.

As far as lawsuits go, Oversee.net’s suit against former employee and shill bidder Nelson Brady was somewhat unique. After all, you had someone who admitted much of the wrongdoing that was alleged.

Yet getting money out of Brady wasn’t going to be easy for Oversee.net. Brady was going to make Oversee jump through some hoops.

For example, Brady subpoenaed Bank of America for “all documents relating to any loans, lines of credit, letters of credit or other credit instruments between BOA and either or both plaintiffs from 2005 to the present,
including, but not limited to a $60 million line of credit issued to Oversee.net in or around 2007.”

Brady also subpoenaed FTI Consulting, Inc., which assisted Oversee.net with its rebate program to affected parties, for data and documents related to communications between a number of parties.

Oversee.net filed Motions to Quash both of these subpoenas. But that’s all a moot point now that the companies have settled. And that’s probably good for both parties.

Extended domain name auction ends tomorrow.

The extended TRAFFIC conference domain name auction run by Latonas.com ends Thursday at 11:15 EDT.

So far four domain names have received bids: Pisos.co (apartments/flats in Spanish) at $15,000, Coche.co (cars in Spanish) at $9,950, Piso.co at $9,950, and AutoReply.com at $1,500.

The extended auction also includes two domain names that appeared sold in the live domain name auction, Shock.com and BVI.com/.co. Latonas believes the bids for these two domain names were fraudulent. Shock.com originally “sold” for $200,000 at the live auction, and BVI.com and BVI.co sold for $110,000.

There are over 750 domain names in the extended auction. The inventory is relatively heavy with .co, .cm, and .tv domain names. A few of the names that look interesting to me at starting bids include:

Physical.com and Physical.co $35,000
MadridJobs.com $500
SanFrancisco.co $400

Oversee.net settles with former employee and class action.

SnapNames has resolved two outstanding lawsuits related to its bidding scandal.

First, the company has resolved its claims with former employee Nelson Brady. Brady was the sole employee who drove up bids on SnapNames. The settlement will not be made public, but SnapNames parent company Oversee.net said the “financial penalty is appropriate considering the seriousness of the improper activity.”

I had checked the case docket this morning and there were no new filings; they will likely be added within the next few days.

Second, the company reached a preliminary settlement in Resmer vs. SnapNames.com. This was originally a U.S. District Court case. Facing problems proving the size of the claims, Stewart Resmer later moved the case.

Details on the class action settlement are available here. Both Stewart Resmer and the class action lawyers will receive compensation paid by SnapNames.