Web 2.0 Keynotes: Mark Carges on Five Things That Matter for Developers Today

The keynotes were thoughtful and down to earth today at the Web 2.0 conference. The hall was packed, and you have never been in a room with so many iPhones in your life.

Tim O'Reilly opened, with a visionary presentation (viewable here) on the general themes of "Web 2.0 Five Years On" and "The Power of Less." He cited interesting ideas in Web 2.0 history (the web as a platform, the Google index as a "database of intentions"), Web 2.0 present (the web is growing up and learning how to use its data), and Web 2.0 future (your houseplants tweet you when their potting soil is getting dry; items are reflected throughout the web in "information shadows" that can be recognized even without global identifiers such as ISBNs ).

O'Reilly's view of Web 2.0 future takes in much that is less trivial than tweeting petunias. He addressed the state of maturity of Web 2.0, and looked forward to probable next stages. To illustrate the direction in which Web 2.0 is evolving, O'Reilly said, "Meaning does not have to be formalized. It can be statistically extracted." Don't worry. O'Reilly supplied examples and practical implications of that dense aphorism.

For example, just as the length and sequence of songs can identify a CD, a sensor's data about the heat and exhaust signature of a major appliance can identify the appliance's make and model. Sensors in homes, factories, hospitals and schools are even now being used to construct a "smart grid." The implication: useful information about things like our cities, global healthcare, and the state of the environment can be extracted from data that is already available to us, without the expense of sending a lot of people around with questionnaires and clipboards and measuring devices. In other words, we can afford the information we need, because we already have it.

Well-received presentations followed, from John Maeda (designer of a friendly inaccurate clock and foreseer of flattened hierarchies), Stephen Elop of Microsoft (who sat down with Tim O'Reilly and told him that Microsoft is becoming much more interoperable), Amanda Kosto (of salaamgarage.com), and Michael Abbott (of Palm).

Mark Carges, eBay CTO and SVP of Global Platform, wrapped it all up with a short, hard-hitting closing keynote (viewable here) entitled "Five things that matter to developers today." Given the economic crisis, his down-to-earth approach seemed the most tailored to the moment. "What do developers care about right now?" is a question that, in the immediate present, is probably not best answered by sweeping or visionary answers. This moment calls for thoughtful, practical measures that embrace new opportunities while minding the bottom line.

Mark's choice of subject matter demonstrates that eBay knows the value of its developer community. Each of his points (summarized below) demonstrates a strong vision of how the Developers Program both depends on developers, and benefits developers.

1. Making money

Of course. Since the first data-scraping and sniping tools... well, wait, make that since eBay first opened its APIs to developers, the eBay development ecosystem has grown with the volume of eBay transactions. eBay sellers sold $60B last year, and the 80,000 developers who helped sellers research, list, and service all those transactions also received their cut.

2. Useful technology

eBay has some of the greatest technology and data assets on the web.

The technology of eBay and PayPal is useful on a massive scale. PayPal has 70 million users. eBay sees 150 million unique visitors per month, and supports 70 million sellers worldwide.

The developer community that provides applications for eBay sellers and buyers uses the eBay APIs to drive as much as 60% of eBay transactions.

3. Accessible technology

Mark emphasized the importance of mobile applications.The eBay iPhone application is a strong start. It is clear that he believes eBay should make a powerful effort to enable mobile usage. eBay and its third-party developers still need to make some breakthroughs to enable accessibility.

4. Technology adapted to you

Today, your cell phone is a communications device, an entertainment center, a mall, and a social network. Tomorrow, it may also be your wallet. Already you can instantly repay a loan to a friend who has a PayPal account. Soon, In-N-Out Burgers may accept PayPal, and you will be able to pay for your burgers at the counter from your cell phone.

PayPal is uniquely adaptable for this kind of use, because it is a single global payment network, with end-to-end transaction visibility, good risk protection and fraud detection, integrated with more than 15k banks. PayPal unifies the world's disparate money systems to enable payments anywhere.

The big news in adaptable technology is that the PayPal Developer Program is opening up later in 2009. Third-party developers will use flexible APIs for sending money to create mobile payments applications that will change the way people pay for things.

5. Open platform

eBay released a new developer opportunity today.SM Apps lets developers embed seller applications in ebay.com, just as you can embed applications in Facebook. The difference is that with SM Apps developers can make money, charging a one-time fee or using a subscription model for use of their application.

Because the SM Apps platform uses the Gadgets specification, applications built for eBay can also operate elsewhere on the web, including on other portal pages.

The Selling Manager tool has 270,000 active, paying businesses operating in the U.S. alone. As Mark said, "While other platforms are trying to figure out monetization... we are set up for you [the developer] to take a cut, and we hope you will."