Cuppacafe

For those of you who though that you were going to have an ebay Christmas...think again:

Ebay became a victim of its own success at the weekend after a surge in the number of items for sale caused the world’s largest online auction site to crash.

Millions of shoppers were first unable to search for items on the website on Saturday, during the crucial run-up to Christmas, after a computer system failure.

Apparently something similar (though not as massive) occurred 10 years ago.

The number of merchants selling items on the site usually rises in the run-up to Christmas, but this year’s rise has been particularly steep because Ebay has encouraged large retailers to sell through the site, which until recently was the preserve of individuals and smaller retailers. Some existing sellers have criticized the policy for putting a strain on the system.

Not sure what this all means, but I guess all those commercials telling folks to list stuff on the auction site did the job. so many folk l;ogged on that the server couldn't handle the traffic.

The Perfessor

This entry was posted on Monday, November 23rd, 2009 at 12:41 pm and is filed under Net Happenings, Thats Weird. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.