eBay to Open Site to Developers

By Geoff Duncan June 16, 2008

eBay to Open Site to Developers

At its annual developers conference in Chicago this week, online auction giant eBay plans to announce Project Echo, a new platform that will enable developers to embed applications where more than 700,000 eBay sellers can subscribe to them. Project Echo will also include APIs that provide developers with information on buyer demographics and habits, along with inventory management tools.

eBay’s primary focus with Project Echo is to quickly offer new tools to its army of sellers: rather than attempting to develop all tools in-house, eBay is seeking to capitalize on developer interest in the platform: in exchange for opening up its API and providing developers access to information that was previously only available to eBay itself, the company hopes to jump-start customized and advanced capabilities for its sellers…and get a cut of the action every time an eBay developer makes a sale. eBay says it will evaluate third party applications to ensure they meet eBay guidelines.

Although most of the enhancement enabled by Project Echo will only be visible to sellers, one new feature will almost certainly impact eBay users: a new Merchandizing API will enable applications to more easily pick additional products and add-ons for users, more easily enabling up-selling and cross-selling on the eBay site.

eBay is also finally rolling out the Client Alert API—announced last year—which will offer users real-time alerts from eBay about account or item activity.

eBay says it has over 70,000 members in its developer program, and more than 12,000 software applications have already been built by third-party developers.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics

Amazon

Former Digital Trends Contributor

Geoff Duncan writes, programs, edits, plays music, and delights in making software misbehave. He's probably the only member…

Deals

eBay Home Learning Sale: Save on AirPods, iPad Pro, MacBook Pro, and more

Learning from home

More people have, through necessity or choice, found themselves doing more work away from the office. However, many parents and students have also been discovering the joys and difficulties of teaching and learning from home, which is something that brings its own unique set of challenges.

There's no denying that the internet has made remote work and learning much more accessible for millions of people, and no matter what age group you're teaching (or what age group you belong to if you're a student), the right equipment can make things even easier. Right now, eBay is having a sale on all sorts of home learning hardware to help teachers and students alike. Below, we've rounded up our favorite picks of the lot, but be sure to head over to the sale page to check out everything that's on offer.
Shop The Sale

Computing

You’re going to hate the latest change to Windows 11

A laptop running Windows 11.

Just two weeks after rolling out a preview build to Windows Insiders, Microsoft is pushing out an update to Windows 11 that adds advertisements to the Start menu. Build KB5036980, which is now slowly rolling out to the wider Windows 11 user base, includes recommendations in the Start menu, and they sneakily sit beside your real apps.

These apps comes exclusively from the Microsoft store, and they sit in the Recommended section of the Start menu. This section includes recently used, frequent, and new apps, but one (or more) slots will now be dedicated to an ad. As the update reads: "The Recommended section of the Start menu will show some Microsoft Store apps. These apps come from a small set of curated developers. This will help you to discover some of the great apps that are available."

Computing

Save $150 on a lifetime license for Microsoft Office for PC

microsoft office professional 2021 deal stack social april 2024 bundle

For one of the cheapest Office deals today, check out Stack Social which currently has a lifetime license for Microsoft Office Professional 2021 for Windows for just $70. The product normally costs $220 so you’re saving $150 off the regular price, all while gaining a lifetime license for some very useful software. If you’ve been considering getting Office and don’t want to deal with the ongoing nature of Office 365, this is a good opportunity to do so for less. Here’s what you need to know before you click the buy button.

Why you should buy Microsoft Office Professional 2021
If you’ve been reading up on whether to use Microsoft Word or Google Docs and you’ve settled on Word, snapping up Microsoft Office Professional 2021 is a great way to do so for less. Described as everything a pro needs, Microsoft Office Professional 2021 is pretty great.