[Cookingboy]

Seriously, Alibaba's e-commerce side operates at a scale that makes Amazon's entire North America (if not global) operation look like a 7/11 store hosted on Geocities.

Last year on Single Day alone, Alibaba handled over $30B in orders with 24 hours, and more impressively those are spread over 1,000,000,000 separate deliveries orders. It means it handled the ordering and payment processing of 11,574 orders per second, and then fulfilled and delivered those ONE BILLION orders within the next 48 hours.

Can you even imagine being an Alibaba warehouse worker during that couple days?

[jmknoll]

Definitely impressive, but certainly not delivered within 48 hours. I’m based in Shanghai and use Taobao/Tmall on a near-daily basis. There was a noticeable slowdown in order for at least a week or two on either side of the holiday. For regular items, if you order it right before the holiday, you may not get it for a couple of weeks in some cases.

Doesn’t take anything away from what Alibaba is doing. It’s a huge spike over their normal business operations. I would be surprised if it didn’t cause a disruption of some sort.

[HeavenFox]

While it is an impressive technological feat indeed, note that Alibaba doesn’t handle their own logistics. It’s more like eBay where the sellers are supposed to fulfill their own orders.

[teknologist]

Would not go as far as to say "delivered" in 48 hours. Shipping can be relatively slow during those promotional days and the app even shows delay warnings on the cart screen / checkout.

[PakG1]

Received my Singles Day purchases next day from jd.com though. Don't think the volume affected them. Can't say for Alibaba.

[Cookingboy]

>Shipping can be quite slow

True, but remember "slow" means something quite different in China where same/next day delivery is very often expected in top tier big cities. So 3-5 days delivery is definitely considered slow, and during these crazy period you may see the glacier speed of one week delivery time :)