eBay DevCon Keynote (Live as it Happened)

These are my notes on the eBay Developer Conference Keynote. Scroll down for the start of the keynote:

10:33 - Greg is back on stage reviewing the rest of the conference. Thats it!

10:28 - Last year - built the foundation. Developer Zone, APIs, basic docs. This year: delivering on the potential. New APIs like SMS, voice access, call transfe, plug-in (2nd half of the year), COM4Web (introduced at this conference), Skypecastsr. Simple try, find, buy for 3rd party apps. More investment in documentation and support, easier to access Skype from other languages. Very cool!

10:26 - Partners have been critical. It started with the hardware community - to make it easier to talk through the PC. TellMe, Salesforce, SugarCRM, and others.

10:24 - Blogs, Social Networks, and Commerce sites are integrating with Skype to help drive community and conversation. Conversations are also great content drivers. Ringtones, Avatars, Services...

10:22 - "We are a product-focused company, not a network" Its more than just voice. video, text, applications. The opportunity is much bigger and we've just scratched the surface.

10:21 - Cool video of a beat-boxer from NY who uses Skype to collaborate with others from all over the world.

10:18 - Introducing Lenn Pryor from Skype, coming up to the stage now.

10:16 - Whats coming? Developer and Application certficiation. Better testing environment. More APIs, and mobile. "Keep your eyes open (for mobile dev stuff?)". Name/Value pairs over HTTPS to access our web services (REST-ish API)

10:14 - Whats new? Integration Center released in Q1. Advanced Patner boarding protocol - allows partners to provision PayPal accounts on behalf of merchants. New PayPal Developer Community driven by Damon Willians. www.pdncommunity.com PayPal Developer Hub: www.paypal.com/developer API Signatures an alternative to SSL Certificates - an alternative credential model.

10:10 - PayPal is more than "payments" Example of SecondLife -- linking a virtual economy to a real economy. PayPal's API's offer a true money exchange platform. MyStoreRewards - makes it possible for small merchants to reward their customers. SoapKnox - an alternative client-based management tool for PayPal.

10:06 - Tim V. from PayPal is on stage now.

10:05 - Announces ProStores Developer Program.

10:04 - Announces GetContextualKwywords beta API - submit a URL to eBay and we'll scan the page and return contextual keywords.

10:01 - Gregs on stage now. Annoouncement about eBay Express Search APIs.

9:55 - What is the ecosystem vision? At core - community. Then services built on top, then platforms build on services. Platforms are developed both by eBay and by developer community. Services, our core competencies are used to build out platforms (features). "That is our vision for a trusted ecosystem"

9:53 - Example of what it would take 5 years ago to build a blog with click to call, contextual ads, presense, ratings, etc... Probably wouldn't even be possible back then. This is a representation of things to come. Another example - mobile with relevence search.

9:51 - What assests are exposed? Payment Engine, Merchant Services, Trading Engines, Listing Managment. (lots more). Additional site features that we'd like to expose, like REcommendation, Reputation System, Product Catalog. Underneath the features is the core scalable, trusted platform

9:48 - Addressing the implications through these requirements: features, scalability, revenue, and trust. What capabilities does eBay have to address these requirements - Services Components, Data Management, Monetization Capabilities, and Reputation Infrastructure. Delivery mechanisms for the services components: API's, SDKs, Testing Environments, Open Source Components, Sample Apps, Public Forums, Developer Support, Tech Docs, and Solution Marketing.

9:44 - Third insight: services are maturing. mashups, new APIs, notifications... Generically useful and flexible components and a robust and reliable infrastructure. Last insight: Monitization models - pay per lead, paid search, affiliate and reward programs. 5 years ago it was all about clicks and traffic. Simpler and clearer monetization models with strong application support are needed.

9:42 - Trends: Users being in charge. What does this mean? Application features must be simple and flexible. The user experience must be seamless across platforms. Users are getting more discerning and more demanding. Development infrastructure is being commoditized. How do I distinguish myself from everyone else who can build a platform. Answer: features and value to the end user become key differentiator.

9:39 - On eBay: 22 billion SQL queries per day, and 2 pedabytes of data storage. 105 million PayPal users. Shopping.com 49 million products. Skype 6.2+ million concurrent users. Message - we deal with massive scale. With the scale of eBay and the diversity of the developer community, there are lots of opportunities.

9:36 - Now - in 4th generation of architecture. Challenge: managing a distributed enterprise architecture. Focus on decoupling components into services. Focus on an event-driven architecture. Process 200 million business events and 3 billion system events every day. Alok thinks this is one of the key investments eBay has made. Classifieds, Shopping.com, and Skype join the family also

9:34 - Third generation architecture - scale out the front-end. Migration to Java and investment in APIs and developers program. Expanding our ability to build out new applications faster. Opening up platform to external innovation was a key win in this generation. 4 million line codebase at that time, 100k new lines of code, every other week. Also investment in business rules, search (Voyager), global expansion, and PayPal integration.

9:31 - Talking about eBay's architecture. V1 to V2 - Perl-based to C++ based. Late 90's - concept of server pools. Challenge - scale the back-end infrastructure. Logically partitioning databases into multiple instances, idea of logical hosts and splitting items across DBs.

9:27 - Alok Bhanot, eBay Chief Architect is on stage now

9:26 - Tailored Shopping Experiences - (vision statement follow - forward looking) Enable developers to use eBay Content - listings, eventually could be feedback, anywhere on the web. PayPal wallet -- use it anywhere on the web, anywhere on mobile. Skype's role - bringing functionality and presence to the intenet (off of the client).

9:21 - Announcement of eBay AdContext -- Contextually relavent eBay ads. Promises more info later in the conference and at eBay Live!. Here is a picture (click to see a larger version):

9:19 - Whats is eBay doing to grow the ecosystem? Reviews & Guides, eBay Blogs & Wikis, Skypecasts.

9:18 - Key trends on the web - user generated content. Says eBay feedback is one of the first examples of user involvement on the internet. Empowering external innovation - the internet is becoming the platform. Its actually about taking bits and pieces of platforms like eBay & PayPal and mashing them up.

9:16 - What have developers done? Make it easier to sell on eBay, tailor shopping experiences (like with tickets), one click shopping via PayPal, Personlizing Skype with avatars, and bringing it to mobile and to enterprise apps like Salesforce.com. Integration across properties, like eBay listings and Shopping.com listings, eBay alerts by phone... "Developers are a crucial part of building the ecosystem"

9:13 - Talking about bringing eBay, PayPal, and Skype together. Example of how PayPal was integrated into eBay Express checkout. Skype and eBay cross-marketing. Skype Me button on ViewItem pages in 5 markets. Soon - sending money to Skype buddies with PayPal.

9:09 - New innovations: eBay Express, PayPal Mobile, Skype Video, SkypeCasts

9:06 - 7 billion Skype minutes in Q1 - 7% of the world's long distance call minutes.

9:05 - He is saying that Skype has a huge growth curve of new users - showing a graph of the first 32 months of eBay's and PayPal's existence. The curve for Skype was then shown, and the difference was startling

9:02 - Evolution of eBay - started in 1995 with the idea of giving everyone a level playing field for trading. 98-02 - going international and category expansion. 2002 - added PayPal to the family, because our community asked us to do it. 2005 - added Skype to the family. It is amazing what Skype has done for communications.

9:00 - Michael Van Swaajj is on stage now talking about "The Strategic Vision: Growing a Trusted Ecosystem"

8:58 - Showing a video of eBay senior execs speaking about the developer opportunity, and teh eBay values - "I think connecting with a higher purpose is really important... we are not just about driving performance, revenue, or cost savings, we are driving innovation" Bill Cobb, President eBay North America

8:55 - Star Developer Award winners announced: Marshall Smith, Aaron Staves, Igor Chouduv, Christopher Buenger, Ron Conery, Brian Lawe, Shannon Sofield

8:50 - Greg is on stage - says this is the 5th annual DevCon

8:46 - Keynote has started. Acrobats on ropes are the opening act. Very cool.

7:40 AM - Breakfast has started -- keynote starts at 8:30 pacific.

-Alan