Unknowingly beat another sniper

I won this item 2 weeks ago. Today when I read the bid log, I realized I just beat another sniper :)

Here is the JoyBidder Auction Sniper bid log screen capture.



My sniper bid fired 10 seconds before auction ended, and I was the highest bidder at $30.89 then. However the price was raised to $33.50 before the auction ended.

Reviewing the eBay bid history tells me what happened.
Here is the ebay bid history screen capture: (my bid is marked with green, my competitor's bid is red)



As you can see, another sniper bid of $32.50 came in 5 seconds later, although it didn't win. If without this final bid, I could have got the item with $3 less. Anyway, I still won the item with 7 cents less than my max bid, and beat the other sniper, not bad :)

I really wish my competitor was using a sniper program to place that last 5 seconds losing bid. Otherwise, I couldn't imaging how unhappy this guy would be after patiently watching the screen, counting the seconds and yet lost the auction to me, who was having lunch with friends then.

Sniper don't Twitter?

One of the feature I built into JoyBidder eBay Auction Sniper is sending direct SMS message to bidder's Twitter ID when an auction is outbid or the sniper price is less than the minimum bid price. To enable this feature is easy, just have your Twitter ID follow http://twitter.com/joybidder. I thought it would be a useful feature, considering other sniper software (online or standalone) only send email alert. (To be accurate, there is one software does send SMS alert, but you need to install Skype and purchase Skype credit).

Here is the screen capture on configuring JoyBidder to sent alert via Twitter.

Almost 2 months after the feature was released, to my surprise, the reception is not what I expected at all. Only a few users have tried, even they don't use that much.

Why is it, could it be of the following reasons?

1. Most of the eBay users don't have Twitter ID?
2. You don't want others to know that your Twitter ID is following joybidder?
3. SMS outbid alert is not useful, since if you are not near your computer, you really cannot do anything with it.

What do you think?