Announcing the Launch of Custom Item Specifics Phase 2

Item Specifics are a great way for Seller to complement their item title and description. In 2007 we launched Custom Item Specifics as a way to expand Item Specifics in to more categories and to give sellers more control over the item specifics that are shown in these categories.

In the next few days, we'll be releasing the second phase of Custom Item Specifics and testing the conversion of a couple of select leaf level categories from the eBay Item Specific platform over to the Custom Item Specifics platform.

Custom Item Specifics Phase 2 introduces some new types of metadata for individual tags including:

• Multi-valued tags
• Required tags
• Closed value list tags (where seller can only use values from a pre-defined enumerated set provide by eBay)
• Tags in dependency relationships (for ex. State and City)

In the next two weeks we'll be converting the following categories from eBay Item Specifics to Custom Item Specifics:

Category Name	Category ID	Multi-Valued Tags	Required Tags	Closed Value list	Dependencies
Wigs & Extensions	60188	N/A	N/A	Condition Hair Type Length	N/A
Men's Belts	2993	N/A	N/A	Condition Size	N/A
Curtains, Drapes	45515	N/A	N/A	Length Width Condition	N/A

If you are currently using eBay Item Specifics for these categories, you do not need to convert your application immediately. eBay will continue to support eBay Item Specifics uploads in the AddItem family of calls even after the category has been converted to use Custom Item Specifics. Items uploaded with eBay Item Specifics will be automatically converted to the Custom Item Specifics platform. 

If, however, your application is dependent on GetItem to update Item Specifics information, you will need to update your application to read Custom Item Specifics when these categories are converted.

We will test these categories until the end of April. Pending test results, we will convert further categories to Custom Item Specifics by early May. The next batch of categories will include Shoes for both Men and Women and Sheets.  

We expect to have fully converted all of the Clothing, Shoes and Accessories Categories as well as much of Home and Garden by mid-June. Throughout all of these conversions the old Item Specifics will continue to be supported in AddItem. This dual support will last through the rest of 2009.