Dear Members of the dotMobi Community:
We have been following the discussions surrounding the dotMobi online auction, hosted by Sedo, that was scheduled to end on 5 December 2007. We think that there are several key misperceptions in the community, and I would like to clear them up so that we can continue having constructive dialogue and move forward.
We have noticed that some people seem to believe that the auction participants who received notifications and invoices before the extension of the auction were the highest bidders at the close of the original auction period.
Sedo, however, tells us that:
a) this is clearly not true in some cases,
b) this is unlikely to be true for the names generating the most activity, and
c) this is possibly not true for any of the auctions.
To those points, Sedo has told us the following:
- As the scheduled auction end approached, bidding activity increased dramatically, creating significantly higher-than-expected traffic.
- Although the web interface slowed down for some participants, the auction interface and bid page remained available for many or all users, and the web servers continued to log incoming bids.
- Once the bid processing server stopped functioning properly, however, many of those bids -- both standard and proxy -- did not get posted to the bid history page.
- As a result of the server crash, another system automatically generated email notices at 5 p.m. GMT to the highest bidder listed on the bid history page, despite Sedo’s attempts to stop that process.
- Because the bid history page did not reflect all of the valid bids, notices were sent to some participants who were not, in fact, the highest bidders.
Under the circumstances, even if there were no disagreement about the point at which the auction should have ended, we can’t be confident of identifying the highest bidder at that point with any reliability. To avoid prolonged disputes about rights to the domain names in the auction, we decided that the fairest course of action was to void the auction results altogether.
We are going to conduct a new auction beginning 23 January 2008 and closing on 30 January 2008. While there is no approach that will satisfy everyone, we believe that this is the best, fairest way to allocate the names in this extraordinary circumstance. Obviously, the new auction has to be free of technical problems, and Sedo reports that they are working to prevent similar problems from recurring. But we are also open to structuring the auction in a way that addresses the fairness concerns that some in the community are expressing. We are interested in hearing these suggestions from the community, and you may direct them to premium@mtld.mobi.
Also, some members of the community have expressed concern that this auction will set a precedent that sellers can void an auction if they simply don’t like the results. That is not the case. We are saying -- in this particular unique circumstance -- that we cannot see a better solution, that we have the legal right to do so given the conduct of the December auction and that we think it is the best way forward for all.
As we’ve said before, we understand that some of you are frustrated and angry -- so are we -- and we very much regret that problems beyond our control marred the third Sedo auction. Be assured that we will do everything in our power to prevent any similar problems in the future.
Best wishes to the dotMobi community for a happy new year.
Sincerely,
Trey
