.De auction traffic halts auction.
Massive traffic for Sedo’s .de “pre-auction” has taken the site down. A message on the site reads:
Due to the extremely high participation in the .De Pre-Auction Sedo?s website was temporarily down. We have decided to extend the auction until 8:00 PM CET. If necessary we will extend the auction later than this time to accommodate additional bids.
Presumably that means 8:00 PM ET. Actually they mean Central European Time, but don’t be surprised if this is extended.
Bidding has been fast and furious all morning. When I checked around 10 am, Com.de was leading the pack at over $100,000. In addition to releasing one and two character .de domains, .de registry DENIC is also releasing domains that include other top level domains, such as com.de and net.de.
The last time I recall Sedo melting under traffic was during a .mobi auction in 2007. Sedo retooled after that and has avoided any meltdowns until today.
We’ll keep you posted.
The October Great Domains auction that ended at the exact same time got totally jacked up as well.
Craig – ugh. They ended at the same time? That doesn’t sound too smart.
COM.DE
How very nice for making subdomains: YourDomain.com.de
That one’s likely to be used for nefarious purposes.
I had 5 domains in the auction including Argument.com.
Sedo management has been mum on what they are going to do to make restitution to the Great Domains auction sellers, bidders etc.
I has been a big headache and no real communication to boot!
When will they learn?
This is rediculous.
After the .mobi fiasco, you’d think they
could figure it out.
Aron – to be fair, I think they did figure it out after .mobi…whatever they did between now and then worked until now. Although I’d question why both the GD and .de auctions ended at the same time.
..I suspect the problem this time was too many auctions, not necessarily too many bids. If you went to their auction page this week there were over 700 paginations. I think their system was created for a relatively small number of auctions at the same time.
What kills me is that they’ve focused on the .DE cash cow domains versus make things right with their Great Domains sellers not to mention the bidders that missed out the last 5-10 minutes.
I understand where you’re coming from, Craig. I’m sure in the rush to get things up they had to make some gut calls. Hopefully they will address concerns of GD sellers.
True.
And I’m not bashing Sedo.
I have a great relationship with many people there.
The .mobi issue was so crazy… I was one that had lawyers fight on our behalf (as a bidder).
I just hope this doesn’t happen again (for Sedo’s sake).
Aron