Who knows about live on-line auctions - software that makes it possible for second by second interactive bidding. I have a couple of questions see the details.
Does the software already exist? packaged off the shelf- if so who is publisher / how much?
Is there anything especially challenging with this type of live interactive functionality?
If not readily available is it difficult to develop from scratch and who could do it? again what sort of cost & development time?
Is there anything I should know about auction software? Any gotcha's and/or what functionality do the large well known on-line auction houses have?
Good Answers (3)
Geoff F.
"Hands-on" Software Architect and Senior Developer
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Second by Second?
Would be interesting to see how you will handle the transaction load with any significant number of bidders. You may need to adjust the "bid time" in relationship to load.
The gotcha is serializing the transactions. This is a technical term and for you it means assuring that bids are listed in the order they really occurred. Since a typical volume web application involves non-serialized transactions to improve performance, this will be your challenge. I think the only way out is it redefine your terms to ones that you can implement truthfully. You don't want bids making it to the queue based on information other bidders never saw.
This probably doesn't sound hard to you. Trust me, it is.
Thomas B.
CTO
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Hi Keith,
A friend of mine asked me a similar question a while ago, so I took a close look at swoopo.com. They have built exactly what you are looking for, including the clock counting down in the browsers and so forth.
I did a search for something open source like it, but came up blank, so you'll need to do it from scratch.
The hard part will be syncing up the clocks on all the clients and getting the bids in the right order, as Geoff said - but you can see how swoopo did it, at least on the browser side.
Cheers,
Thomas
Links:
Martin A.
Freelance communications consultant and entrepreneur
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Hi Keith, there's quite a lot of software out there already, I've added some links to some of the better known one's below. Not sure if they are all suitable for your requirements but they're a good place to start. I wouldn't recommend building it yourself with so many suppliers already in place, unless you need it do work in a very specific way that they can't accomodate.
www.red2.co.uk, www.pacts.co.uk, www.xcent.com, www.idsauction.co.uk
Links:
More Answers (8)
Hi Keith,
Yes It exists, However in a different form. Heard of Stock market.. That is the same thing. I agree with Mr. Feldman yes it is a big task to create something like it but not impossible.
another thing that just came to my mind (may be wrong though)
one can make something just like a real auction ( as seen in movies, have'nt been to a auction ever) the application can start with a minimum rate and wait for some time for someone to agree on that rate once someone agrees to that rate move to the next increment and wait for someone to agree.
Regards
Vishal
Stephen P.
Software Tools Developer at Soft Mechanics Ltd.
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Hi Keth,
It might be easier in reverse - a "dutch auction". You count down the price and the first person to bid gets it at that price. No need to store anything about the bids as there is only going to be one.
There will be issues around checking all the bidders have the money some form of registration and depositing will have to take place (Re-starting the auction because of time-wasters will not be popular). I dont know but i suspect different legal jurisdictions internationaly could be a gotcha as well.
By the way there is ebay!
I've heard of a company called Curtis Fitch - but not sure on all the details. Worth a try: http://www.curtisfitch.com/
Links:
There's quite a few - auction flex, rainworx, auctionscribe. Big auction houses EG Christies have their own in-house, take a look at Christies LIVE.
Key is what you want to use this for?
Check out https://ssl.prologiceprocurement.com/home.htm and speak to Dermot Coyle.
Use my name for reference if needed.
All the best
Julian
Hi Keith, there are a number of Dutch auction packages out there. My experience is not a good but perhaps and interesting one. THE BUYER used this approach to buy product and to get hold of professional, consulting and technical services. Once it became obvious that BUYER were only after the cheapest, rather than the most appropriate skills for a reasonable price, everyone kept reducing their offer and the last man standing 'won'. Later when BUYER could not get even these people to supply skills because the price was too low, their projects and customer satisfaction suffered. The problem continued. For example when and organization said "my day rate is £1,100 a day", procurement said but my benchmark says we can get this for £300 so if you want the business you charge £300/day..... Procurement gave themselves a slap on the back for driving down the buying price but the line of business managers lost their supply chain. Guess where the quality vendor went ...... not with BUYER but their competitors.....
Regards
Peter
It is real. It happened to me when i was bidding on eBay. Outbid at last millisecond. Ddidn't bother to track such a package down myself though. Too mean to pay for one.
