The Very First Online Auctions

From time to time I see postings on eBay boards and elsewhere arguing about where and when the first online auctions were held. Some folks naturally think eBay (as eBay or Auction Web) was first, because it was the first auction of which they were aware.

Several other Web sites are suggested as candidates for having held the first-ever online auction, but the truth is that the first online auctions weren't on the Web at all.

As I mention in the Introduction to The eBay Survival Guide, major consumer online services such as CompuServe (nee MicroNET) and The Source were sponsoring auctions in the early 1980s. Specifically, Comp-U-Card Online/Comp-U-Store held weekly auctions for consumer goods like the brand-new Sony Walkman in 1983, and CompuServe's first eBay-style automated online auctions were held in 1982.

But those sales were predated by auctions conducted through bulletin board postings and email. The auctioneer/seller would post a notice on a system bulletin board, describing the item for sale and setting a minimum bid and closing time. (There was no way to post a photographic image back then). Bids were either emailed to the bidder or posted as replies to the seller's original message.

CompuServe was sponsoring such auctions through its classified ad system in 1980. But individuals ran their own online auctions as early as 1979 on both CompuServe and The Source, which were in beta the first part of that year. Such auctions were also run on the earliest public BBSes, going back to 1978. (There's no record of auctions being held on the first public BBS, Ward Christensen's CBBS, in 1977.)

So who held the very first online auction? The early BBS callers and members of MicroNET and The Source out there will have to slug it out for the bragging rights. I didn't hold my first online auction (via email) until 1983, when I sold off an old printer for parts, and I don't know anyone who held an auction before 1982.

All of this talk of "first" pertains only to computer bulletin boards and consumer online services. If you expand the definition of "online" to include cable TV-based interactive electronic communication, you'll find that online auctions predate BBSes, CompuServe, and The Source. Warner Cable Corporation's Videotex experiment, QUBE, which went live on December 1, 1977, included online auctions among its many services. QUBE (and later services like Channel 2000 and Viewtron in other parts of the country) offered pretty much everything you get on the Internet today: email, shopping, polls, ads, single-and multi-player gaming, news, weather, stock reports, and bulletin boards - along with real television. These were computer-based services delivered by cable television. (The Source actually provided many of the services for Channel 2000 and Viewtron.) The only major elements missing were software downloads and instant messaging.

The QUBE auctions were held nightly on a talk-variety show called "Columbus Alive." The proceeds went to charity, and the auction period was limited to an hour or three in the evening. Bidding was in realtime. Viewers could leave the program, return to check the progress of the sale, and bid again - overall, not unlike an eBay Live Auction, but with live video of the item being sold, and no absentee bids.

Most auction sale amounts were added to the viewer's monthly cable bill, and there was no feedback system.

Credited to  : Michael A. Banks
URL           : http://www.auctionbytes.com/cab/abu/y206/m08/abu0173/s04

This week Poll Analysis

The title of the poll analysis in the this week is "Will you participate in this coming contest?" We had created a pie chart for the vote result.

It had only 5 voters joined the poll analysis question.Most people are interested to participate the contest because it had 3 voters out to 5 voters choose the answer "yes". It had only 2 voters choose the answer "Maybe", that means the 2 voters are still considering to participate. Besides, there didn't have any voters vote for the last answer "No, I'm not interested".

In conclusion,as the vote result,there are more voted in "Yes".I appreciate the voters that have been voted on this question.Crossword puzzle is the good way for improve the knowledge.So by doing the contest,you can improve your knowledge on electronic auction.I hope there will more people will participate in this contest.

What Is a Reverse Auction?

As the name suggests, reverse auctions are, in many respects, the opposite of traditional auctions. In a traditional auction, a seller offers an item, and potential buyers compete with each other for the purchase. Potential buyers continue to drive the price up until no other participant is willing to bid any higher.

In a reverse auction, multiple suppliers are vying to sell goods and services to a single buyer. The potential suppliers are driving the price down until a pre-established bidding period ends or until no supplier is willing to offer an even lower price. Contrary to traditional tender processes, reverse auctions allow companies to submit multiple prices.

Source: http://blog.eauctionservices.com/

Fraud Detection in Electronic Auction

Auction frauds plague electronic auction websites. Unfortunately, no

literature has tried to formulate and solve the problem. This paper aims to tackle

it by suggesting a novel method to detect auction fraudsters, which involves determining and extracting characteristic features from exposed fraudsters,

through analyzing the fraudsters’ transaction history which exists as a graph.

We then use the features for detecting other potential fraudsters. Choosing the

best features is a challenging and non-trivial task; however, with the features

that we have currently selected, our method has already achieved a precision of

82% and a recall of 83% during an evaluation on some real test data from eBay.

3.1 Problem Definition

Here, we examine the problem of detecting auction fraudsters. Specifically, we define

the problem as:

Given:

· The information of some electronic auction users: their profiles and their transaction

history

· Some exposed fraudsters

We want to find out:

· Who else are also fraudsters

The profiles and transaction history of eBay users are readily available from the eBay

website (Appendix), while the knowledge about the exposed fraudsters can be acquired from

news articles, user forum on eBay, and by noting the large number of negative feedback

we define the auction fraud problem as given these two pieces of information, how do we

given by other buyers or sellers saying the fraudsters have never delivered the items. Thus,

identify other potential fraudsters before they carry out frauds.

source:

http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dchau/papers/chau_fraud_detection.pdf

Get start with the contest

We are the founder of 'electronicAuction.blogspot.com' I am Kumaran, I'm Arul, and I'm Jana. There is a surprise for you!In order for people to be aware of electronic auction, We have organised a contest related to our blog. Are you eager to know what is the prize?

We have planned to give a headphone for the winner.

To win this prize, Please do participate in this contest. DON'T MISS THIS CHANCE !!!


This week is the first week of the contest. Lets start from CROSSWORD PUZZLES. The following are the questions.

Please do the registration before you start doing this contest. Visit to our facebook page to get to know the registration method. (Kindly to inform, Please read the Rules and regulations.)

Once answered the question, you may email us the answers.
EXAMPLE :
(Your Name)
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.

This week Poll Analysis

We did poll voting with a question regarding " What do you think about our Blog ?"

By giving some examples such as Perfect, Good, Okay, Need to improve.We also created a pie chart which is related to our topic to show the vote results specifically.

The Contest

We having a contest regarding to our topic.It will start on the 11th of October till 20th of October 2011. For your information, the question will be post on the 11th of October at our facebook page which are still under our concern.

There are prizes will be given after the contest end.Which we have planed to give a HEADPHONE. we are sure it is a reasonable prize.

For any enquiries about the contest or you are not sure with some rules and regulations, feel free to email us at one of the following email address:

kumaran.csc@gmail.com

arulselvan.csc@gmail.com

janapathma.csc@gmail.com