Blogs

Sedo held a dot mobi auction sponsored by mTLD (The .mobi registry) to auction off the premium mobile domain names (Music.mobi, Games.mobi, ect).  Here is a summary (Written by Sedo) of what transpired:

“On December 5, 2007, the third and final .MOBI auction was scheduled to close on Sedo’s domain auction platform. In line with the previous two .MOBI auctions, the available domains garnered significant attention and received many competing bids in the seven days the auction ran. The domains received so much attention in the final moments that Sedo’s auction servers crashed before the completion of the auctions, rendering our system incapable of processing many validly submitted bids, including proxy bids set by user’s using the feature to automatically bid up to a maximum amount, and sending out winner notifications in error.”

Several people who were bidding on these domain names, recieved notifications that they had won. Then shortly after, received notifications, letting them know that the domains were getting an extension, due to the reasons cited above. They ran the auction and again the domain names sold, this time for much higher. (Sedo got on the phones and starting calling up their big buyers).

However, Sedo has decided in order to be fair - they will re-run the auctions again. Not only will the winners of the first auction not get the domain, but now the winners of the extended auction will not get the name either. I think its quite ironic that if we win an auction at Sedo - were expected to pay for the domain name, but when Sedo sells a domain name and the price isnt quite what they had hoped, they simply extend the auction or re auction altogether. Shame on Sedo for this weak practice.