We are 9! The 9th Anniversary of the eBay Developers Program

Many changes have taken place since our 8th anniversary:

• In August 2009, eBay opened its new App Store for Sellers, offering developers the ability to embed their business productivity applications in My eBay, where hundreds of thousands of eBay Sellers currently manage their online business.
• As of Q3 2009, the eBay Developers Program has grown to more than 100,000 members who have created over 13,000 live applications.
• More than 60% of all eBay.com listings come through eBay Web services, with over 30% coming through third-party tools via the eBay Developers Program.
• In Q3 2009, the eBay Platform handled over 27 billion Web service requests.
• Five developers were honored this year with annual eBay Star Developer Awards for improving user experience, helping sellers adapt to rapid improvements in eBay Marketplaces, providing product input that improves the API platform for the eBay developer community, and more.

2009 eBay Star Developer Awards winners are:

• DSR Rockstar: Seller Machine CRM by BengalOne
• Most Innovative: Dynamic pricing feature by Monsoon
• Early Adopter: Mercent Retail for eBay by Mercent
• Service to the Developer Community: Jake Becker (helios825) of WatchCount.com
• Rapid Evolution: Sales Manager by InkFrog

Thank you all for another great year! :-)

Win up to $150,000 for PayPal X applications! Registration Deadline Dec 16

Want a Chance at a Little Extra Spending Money?The PayPal X Developer Challenge contest might be just the ticket!

Create the most innovative app using PayPal's new Adaptive APIs. Enter and get your application reviewed by the judges. Increase your application's exposure!

This is a great opportunity to have your application reviewed by respected technology visionaries! Take a chance. Enter!

The Judges

• Pierre Omidyar, Co-founder and Founding Partner, Omidyar Network
• Marc Andreessen, Co-founder, Netscape, Opsware, and Ning, Inc.
• Scott Thompson, President, PayPal
• Roelof Botha, Venture Capitalist, Sequoia Capital

The Challenge

Using the newly launched PayPal X APIs, create the most innovative payment app for businesses in areas such as services, social media, gaming, mobile and consumer electronics.

The Prizes

• First Prize: US$50,000 cash + up to US$50,000 in waived transaction fees
• Second Prize: US$25,000 + up to US$25,000 in waived transaction fees

Details and registration for the PayPal Developer Challenge

GlobalGiving: 'Innovate for Good' Contest

GlobalGiving Launches Developer Program with Its ‘Innovate for Good’ Contest with eBay

In partnership with eBay, GlobalGiving is giving developers the opportunity to show their creativity and talent in a way that has big social impact and major visibility through the GlobalGiving and eBay platforms using either GlobalGiving or eBay APIs—or both.

The winning developer will win an all-expenses-paid trip to visit a GlobalGiving project in one of many exotic project locations around the globe!

GlobalGiving, a nonprofit funded by Omidyar Network, is an eBay-like platform for giving to specific, grassroots social and environmental projects located around the world.Entries will be reviewed by a high-profile panel of judges including Kumar Kandaswamy, Head of eBay Developers Program, Mari Kuraishi, Founder and President of GlobalGiving, and Adam Hirsch Community Director of Mashable.

Entries are being accepted now through March 3rd, 2010. Winners will be announced March 19th, 2010. Get started now!

eBay Update on Weekend Site Restoration – Lorrie Norrington, President, eBay

Update on yesterday's posting (copied from eBay Announcements) about the weekend site restoration:

"On Saturday we fixed a software issue that resulted in a disruption to our site.  Because this was an isolated incident and not systemic, we were able to correct the problem and resume normal operations. By Sunday, the site was performing well in stress tests, handling increased activity levels throughout the day.

While we’re confident that we remedied the software problem and that it won’t reoccur, we deeply regret the impact it had on the eBay community. To minimize the impact, we’re working to ensure that sellers and buyers whose transactions were affected by the disruptions will be made as whole as possible. This includes listing fee refunds and protection against negative or neutral buyer feedback as well as detailed seller ratings (DSRs) lower than 5 stars for impacted sellers, and coupons for buyers of items that were impacted by the disruption.  

To the eBay community, you have our most sincere apologies for the disruption and inconvenience caused by the software problem … and our commitment to continuing to provide the best marketplace for sellers and the best deals for buyers."

Sincerely,
Lorrie Norrington
President, eBay

Join us in welcoming Sri Shivananda to the Developers Program

Hi everyone,

I'm Kumar Kandaswamy, and I'm pleased to announce that we've named a new leader for the eBay Developers Program. Sri Shivananda, an experienced eBay veteran, was recently named Senior Director of Platform at eBay. In this role, Sri leads the eBay Developers Program as well as the Tech and Application Platforms. I will continue my involvement with the program and will be reporting into Sri, who will set the strategy for the teams.

We were lucky enough to get Sri when Half.com acquired Deja.com in Dec 2000. Since then he has worked in various engineering roles at the company including roles in operations, product development and architecture—the most recent of which was as head of Architecture.

During his time in architecture, he worked on helping create new solutions for various business & technology features while architecting for scalability, availability and reliability at Web scale. In this role, he was responsible for driving the technology strategy of the eBay marketplace. In addition, over the last 9 months, he has been a strong advocate at eBay to create features as re-usable services.

One fun fact about Sri, he's multi-lingual. He understands 5 languages, speaks & reads 4, and writes 2. So feel free to drop him a line to say "bonjour."

I know I speak for the entire program when I say that Sri is a great addition to the team, and we look forward to working with him to make this the best time yet for developers building applications with eBay's API platform.

With that, I'll introduce Sri.

--  Kumar Kandaswamy

Excited about joining the eBay Developers Program

Hi all,

I'm Sri Shivananda, Senior Director of Platform at eBay, and the new head of the eBay Developers Program. I've been admiring this program from afar and I'm thrilled to be able to join Kumar and the rest of the folks here who have made this program a success. We're up to almost 100,000 members now! I look forward to meeting you all and working with you to ensure your success.
 
Since I'm new to this role, I'm going to hold off on announcing any new plans until I've had a chance to speak with developers and make sure I'm making the best decisions for the program and your opportunities with the eBay marketplace.

What I can share is that I am 100% behind the vision that Mark Carges provided in the eBay DevCon 2009 Keynote we hosted here at our headquarters in San Jose. That vision is to speed innovation and continue to support the platform to enable more flexible development for internal eBay developers and for API developers like you.

As an example of what we're working on, we recently launched Selling Manager Applications that provided third-party developers direct contact to sellers looking for useful tools to grow their businesses and make them successful.

I'd love to hear your questions and comments, and I invite you to drop me an email to introduce yourself at sri AT ebay DOT com or follow me on Twitter @srishivananda.

Thanks and I look forward to working with all of you!

Sincerely,
Sri Shivananda

eBay Giving Works lowers minimum donation to $1, extends automatic collection date

Starting October 1, the eBay Giving Works minimum donation will be reduced from $5 to $1 per successful listing. In addition, the automatic collection date for donations will be extended from the second Monday after a listing ends to the fourth Monday after a listing ends.

The lower minimum donation will make it more affordable than ever for sellers to get the cause marketing benefits of eBay Giving Works. The extra two weeks before automatic donation collection gives sellers more time to receive their funds from PayPal and the buyer, before MissionFish collects the donation. (As always, donation minimums and collections dates do not apply to nonprofits selling on eBay to raise funds.)

If you have questions about these changes — or want to learn how to offer eBay Giving Works to your users — please contact MissionFish, eBay’s nonprofit partner. For information on how to use the API with Giving Works, see the API Docs.

Last Chance for Special Developer Offer -- Act by Friday, 10/9!

We had a great webinar with developers last Thursday outlining the Selling Manager Applications developer opportunity we're offering before the holiday shopping season. If you had to miss it, not to worry! You can still email us at developer-relations AT ebay.com to get the details and get in on our offer before our deadline Next Week.

As a recap, if you submit your Business Readiness Review and your Billing Plan by Friday, October 9th, then successfully complete your Application Review to launch your SM Application by Thursday, November 15th, you’ll get:

four hours of premium DTS Support Requests and LiveHelp (a $300 value)

premier marketing placement as a featured application for the month of December on the eBay Applications Directory (http://applications.ebay.com)

we'll waive our eBay cut of the rev share (20%) through March 2010 –- so you get to keep 100% of your application fees earned through March 31, 2010

We want you to join us, so don’t delay! Email us and get in on our special deal by Friday, October 9th, so that you’re ready to access new customers and make more money in time for the busiest selling and shopping season on eBay.com.

- Delyn

Bill Me Later Coming Soon to eBay

In the coming weeks we'll be introducing Bill Me Later on eBay, as well as on other merchant sites through PayPal, beginning with a launch for a limited number of buyers and sellers in the U.S.

Qualified PayPal customers will be able to use Bill Me Later during eBay checkout. For select sellers, PayPal will automatically add Bill Me Later as a way to pay. Sellers included in the initial rollout will be notified via email by PayPal.

Developers who currently support PayPal will not need to make any code changes to support Bill Me Later. In GetItemTransactions and related calls, items that are paid for using Bill Me Later will use the existing PayPal value in the BuyerPaymentMethodCodeType.

Third-party checkout (3PXO) providers must use Express Checkout for Bill Me Later purchases. Bill Me Later is not supported by CP Cart.

Find out more at https://www.billmelater.com/help/ebay_seller_faq.xhtml.

Special Developer Offer: New App Store for eBay Sellers

Greetings eBay API developers!

We’re introducing a special offer for developers who launch their applications on eBay.com for Selling Manager and Selling Manager Pro subscribers in time for the upcoming holiday season. Selling Manager Applications are useful to any growing small business with needs around merchandising, customer service, mobile alerts, returns/ resolutions, bulk editing of listings, accounting, shipping, and more. eBay sellers need these tools even more around high volume times like the holidays.

So here’s the deal:

If you submit your Business Readiness Review and your Billing Plan by Friday, October 9th, then successfully complete your Application Review to launch your SM Application by Thursday, November 15th, you’ll get:

• four hours of premium DTS Support Requests and LiveHelp (a $300 value)
• premier marketing placement as a featured application for the month of December on the eBay Applications Directory (http://applications.ebay.com)
• we'll waive our eBay cut of the rev share (20%) through March 2010 –- so you get to keep 100% of your application fees earned through March 31, 2010

In order to take advantage of these incentives, you’ll want to join us for an informational webinar scheduled on Thursday, September 24 at 9:30am PT that will help you bring your application live to site, so you can take advantage of these incentives. Email us at developer-relations AT ebay.com to get the details.

Don’t delay! Email us to RSVP to the webinar on Thursday, September 24th and get in on our special deal by Friday, October 9th, so that you’re ready to access new customers and make more money in time for the busiest selling and shopping season on eBay.com.

- Delyn