Over the past year, the eBay developer network has more than doubled to roughly 20,000, accounting for 22% of listings on the site. eBay is not the only large marketplace that is using web services technology to extend its reach, as Amazon also has a similar program.
For instance, if you log onto Verizon’s Superpages phone directory site, you can click an eBay tab and conduct product searches over eBay. Similarly, if you click on FatLens, you can click on popular concert events to get a list of what tickets are available on eBay.
Increasingly, developers are adding applications on other devices such as iPods or PocketPCs, where you can walk through a store, then use your wireless service to connect to eBay to compare prices. Or, if you’re a subscriber of the Time Warner cable service in Austin, Texas, you can bid on items through your TV and cable remote control.
eBay provides SOAP and REST-based XML APIs to developers, and offers .NET and Java versions of software development kits (SDKs) for developers to use. The user connects with the eBay third party affiliate, which in turn directs them to eBay’s login screen so the user can enter their personal profile on the eBay site. If the login is accepted by eBay, a security token is passed back to the third party, so user data is not exposed.
Back in June, eBay announced a new hosted Community Codebase developers site which provides access to eBay interfaces, software development kits, and applications contributed by the eBay developer community under open source license. According to Greg Isaacs, director of the eBay developers program, there are currently over 1400 applications available under open source at eBay.
