SHOPPING MAUL: The fury over Click Frenzy's failure

THE reaction to Click Frenzy's failed launch was swift and brutal, with shoppers and readers panning the crash-and-burn sale.

THE reaction to Click Frenzy's failed launch was swift and brutal, with shoppers, readers and social media commentators seizing upon #clickfail with gusto.

It was supposed to be "the sale that stopped the nation" but instead, it was the sale that crashed the internet.

National sales event Click Frenzy opened for business at 7pm AEDT last night and its host website crashed moments after it began.

The #clickfrenzy hashtag was quickly usurped by #clickfail on Twitter, as many websites from participating retailers were unreachable before or shortly after the sale opened, crushed by the number of requests.

News Limited's National Technology Editor, Jen Dudley-Nicholson, summed up the sentiment, tweeting: "To be fair, Click Frenzy is a frenzy of clicking. Sadly, everyone is clicking the Refresh button."

Other shoppers and readers weren't so light-hearted about the Click Frenzy's failure to launch.

"It was an epic failure... I tried to get on and couldn't," wrote news.com.au reader Chrissy Brown.

"I managed to get on this morning and had a look at some of the so-called 'bargains' and found that they were the same prices as what was currently on offer in the same shops last week. Huge con job."

Michelle Shoghi wrote: "I'm really annoyed that I wasted so much time trying to get onto their site last night."

Domenic Bereaux waited up all night only to be sadly disappointed, blaming part of the let-down on the major hype leading into Click Frenzy.

"Click Frenzy I found was not that cheap. I don't know what the hype was all about," he wrote.

"When I was finally able to get online at 4.00am I had a look at fragrances at Chemist Warehouse and they were the same price as on their website."

Ant declared the launch was a "disaster", i-heart-shopping labelled it a "mess", while other readers questioned why you'd ever bother staying loyal to Australian shopping when "the whole thing falls in a heap".

Social media expert Karalee Evans watched the mayhem unfold on Twitter, and what she described as the unravelling of a "perfect campaign".

"The people behind Click Frenzy got a lot of traction, but of course you have to be ready for it if it goes wrong," Ms Evans, the Text100 Digital Strategist, told news.com.au.

"You have to have confidence in the product. Otherwise that hashtag (#clickfrenzy) and the community you've created are going to react and transfer into backlash.

"People on Twitter are quick. I think it was quite interesting to see the hashtag move to #clickfail very quickly."

Ms Evans says failure or letdown tends to galvanise the Twitter community, as positive campaigns and charity movements also can.

But she's not so sure the negative buzz around Click Frenzy will bother the organisers all that much.

"The people behind Click Frenzy made it pretty clear on Facebook last night that they won't be too disappointed," she said.

"Click Frenzy probably won't see it as a huge failure. They developed a huge community and captured hundreds of thousands of email address, so I'm not sure they'd be too worried about it.

"I suspect the retailers and partners will be very disappointed by it. Some brands will be in response mode."

Readers weren't the only people feeling let down; retailers also felt the pinch of the Click Frenzy failure.

The Iconic is extending its sale for another 24 hours because they were disappointed by the Click Frenzy site's failure to cope with demand.