Developer's Program: Check out eBay Flyer!

Hey There,

Faithful Chatter readers may know that our friend and guest blogger for the eBay Developer's Program, Delyn Simons, is out enjoying her new baby. Filling in for her while she's out is the very talented Gail Bower. She's using her first appearance on The Chatter to tell us about the new eBay Flyer. Enjoy!

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What’s old is new again!  With eBay Flyer, you can now quickly create the familiar “FOR SALE” paper flyers, complete with tear-strips along the bottom, so interested buyers can easily find you on eBay.  eBay Flyer is fantastic for selling those large, awkward or locale-specific items like couches, TVs, cars, furniture, scuba gear and anything else you don’t want to or can’t haul to the post office.

Creating a flyer is super easy, free, and your listing information is even already in the flyer!  Post flyers (legally, of course) all around town … college campuses, churches, stores, health clubs, the Laundromat – you get the idea. The potential buyer can take a tear-strip off the flyer and when they return home, they simply enter the URL on the tear-strip which will take them directly to your auction.  It’s another great way to get the word out about items you have for sale on eBay.

Try it today and you may wind up selling more and selling faster.  That’s money in your pocket!

The Best Stuff on eBay is now on Facebook

My wonderful colleague Delyn usually covers the eBay Developers beat on the Chatter, but she's taking some time off after becoming a mommy (for the second time!). So I've stepped in to give you a glimpse into what our intrepid band of developers are up to.

Delyn's previous post mentioned the eBay Marketplace for Facebook application, just one of the many ways our Developers program is trying to ride the popularity of social networking sites (like Facebook) in order to help eBay members find great deals or promote items they're selling.

But what does a social networking site like Facebook have to do with your items for sale on eBay or with that hard-to-find item you've been looking for? Here's Trisha Okubo from our Developers Program to tell you more:

Do you get frustrated trying to uncover the hidden treasures on eBay? It's OK -- it happens to the best of us. In eBay's crowded, bustling marketplace, it's often easy to miss the gems.

But now, if you're on Facebook, there's an easier way to find the cool stuff on eBay. Join the eBay community on Facebook, where you can see and share the best stuff on eBay with your other Facebook friends. Who might share it with their Facebook friends. Who, in turn, might share it with their Facebook friends. And so on. The business school gurus call it "viral marketing."

As you use the eBay Marketplace application, you'll find handpicked goods from your Facebook friends and the Community at large. You'll find stuff you and your friends care about -- anything and everything from the robin's egg blue 19th century teapot your BFF (Best Friends Forever in social networking lingo) has her eye on to your nephew's video game picks (Guitar Hero III, anyone?).

eBay Marketplace lets you share what you're doing on eBay with your friends on Facebook. Did you just list a gorgeous jewelry case for sale on eBay? Or are you itching to brag to your friends about the pair of Marc Jacobs round toe boots you just won? If you choose, eBay Marketplace can share the news with your friends on Facebook automatically. 

But you can do more than just share your stuff with your friends. If you run across the perfect vintage midcentury modern lamps for your sister's redecorated living room, you can share them with her with the click of a button. Or -- you could scoop them up and get a jump on your Christmas shopping, if you haven't finished it already.  :)

Community Next: "Community Is Your Most Valuable Asset"

Scott Beale / Laughing Squid

In early October Trisha Okubo, Choon Chong and Sunny Li from eBay's Platform & Innovation team attended Community Next, a Silicon Valley event about social network platforms. It turned out to be a hands-on lesson in how to create a viral community application. The eBay team's participation was important because it helped us improve our understanding of developing successful applications for the emerging world of social networking sites - a world that some of our buyers and sellers have already started exploring (for example, see my earlier Chatter Blog post about the eBay Marketplace for Facebook application).

Choon entered the conference's Iron Coder competition, where he was tasked to build a Facebook application and recruit as many users as possible — all within 24 hours. Read on as Trisha and Sunny re-cap their learnings from the event and top tips for building a truly viral app (Gesundheit!)

- Delyn

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So, does Choon have the stuff to win the $5000 IronCoder contest?  Take a look at his entry and decide for yourself. Aptly named ForeignPoke, it allows you to do stuff to your friends on Facebook in the language of your choice. So — you can smack your friends in German, kiss them in French, or bite them in Italian.

At the 24 hour mark, ForeignPoke, was far from first place (with 25 users to the winner's 147)—and the $5,000 prize. (It seems that the friends we contacted to add the application don't check e-mail on Friday night.) But now, less than two weeks later, ForeignPoke has grown on its own to over 2,000 users, and an ardent fan even volunteered to translate the actions into his native Swedish!

What can we learn from ForeignPoke about how to create a viral application? Three simple rules:

(1) Start with share-worthy content. The foundation of a viral application is content, and if it's content that people don't want to share, you're out of the game before you even started playing. At the heart of ForeignPoke is the messages, which allow you to poke your friends in languages as diverse as Chinese, Hebrew, and even "Yoda." Poke you I must, as he would say.

(2) Make it easy for people to share. Aim to eliminate roadblocks—and any friction that makes it harder for people to share information with one another. ForeignPoke makes it super simple to poke friends—all you have to do is choose a message, select a language, and decide which friend(s) to poke. Automatically generated "news feed" announcements that describe the poking taking place (e.g. "Choon just poked Trisha in Pirate!") further simplify the information sharing process.

(3) Create incentives for people to share. Incentives can take many forms—and don't need to be monetary. Points can represent rewards, and people will collect them for bragging rights—or to move to higher levels within the application. As ForeignPoke was built literally overnight, it's currently limited to the core poking functionality (if you're wondering what I'm talking about, read the Wikipedia entry on poking on Facebook). But the most natural extension of the application is the introduction of points and levels. The more you poke others, the more points you collect. And while collecting points could be an end in and of itself, we could reward the most active users by, for example, unlocking new languages or actions.

Remember that ForeignPoke was built in a few short hours as part of an exercise during the CommunityNext event. But we'll use the lessons we learned to build applications that help our own Community succeed on social networking sites.

- Trisha and Sunny

Traveling with Rolf to Emerce e.day

Rolf Skyberg, Disruptive Innovator here at eBay, recently returned from a whirlwind trip to France and the Netherlands. Back from his travels, he gives his take on Paris, Rotterdam, high-speed trains, humor that doesn't always translate, as well as the exotic (and to some, inexplicable) appeal of mayonnaise below. Enjoy!

-Delyn

Rendezvous'ing with Max Mancini, the director of Platform and Disruptive Innovation in Paris, we first met with our French team to discussion innovation, web trends and how business gets done. We learned quite a lot from them including how they manage their projects and all the exciting things they are developing. Again it reminded us how truly a global company eBay is.

Taking the high-speed "Thalys" train from Paris to Rotterdam in a short three hours brought us within walking distance to the primary reason for our trip, Emerce e.day. Billing itself as the "premier event of 2007 where inspiring speakers and innovative companies shed light on the latest technologies and trends," I had been invited to speak after my presentation at the Web 2.0 EXPO in San Francisco. After enjoying a speaker's dinner hosted by Rotterdam's city council, I returned to my hotel room and really set about revising my presentation for a European audience.

When I'd presented my Web 2.0 presentation earlier to our Paris office, some of my slides were unintentionally hilarious while other jokes fell flat on their face. Apparently some things don't translate well across languages. My new presentation for e.day included references to windmills (a Dutch favorite), a little bit of American history, and a new message overall: "Web 2.0 is an era, not a thing." The morning of my presentation, my message carried well as I presented to the packed audience in a renovated Dutch Koffie factory. Whipping through 477 slides in only 35 minutes, I drank the three bottles of water that had been placed on my podium while the group of international business people quizzed me about community, Web 3.0, and what to think of the internet in general. Max explored the conference floor visiting our Marktplaats team and attending other sessions while I talked to some small groups throughout the day. We left the conference inspired by the enthusiasm of everyone in attendance.

I think the biggest message that I took from the e.day conference and meeting with our worldwide teams was that we all have the same basic needs. Languages and cultures may be different, but deep down we all want and fear the same things. Business is important, but the connections we make with our loved-ones is stronger. Everyone wants a place to call their own, but to be invited to share in someone else's space. We fear that change will bring turmoil, but it's too exciting to turn back now. The world is a big place, and friends help lead the way when the path gets dark. I know that by embracing these learnings and accepting them as simple truths, success will surely follow.

PS: I also learned that around the world, everybody likes fried potatoes, and the Dutch like theirs with mayonnaise.

- Rolf Skyberg

eBay Desktop Wins 2 Adobe MAX Awards: RIA and People's Choice

Alan Lewis just got back from the Adobe MAX show in Chicago, where eBay Desktop won 2 awards: Best Rich Internet Application and People's Choice. The application (which is in public beta now) shows what is possible with eBay's API platform, a point that was not lost on the developers and press in attendance.

Check out the industry blog and media coverage from GigaOM, Mashable, InformationWeek and ZDNet. And here are the awards, placed in our eBay Innovation Showcase (a.k.a. the end-cap of our cubicle):

- Delyn

Winners of eBay Widget Contest

  Congratulations to the winners of the eBay Innovate Widget Contest. These developers built their widgets using the eBay platform: 

• 1st place winner (of a Sony PSP3) was the iPhone My Ebay application by SilkSystem Solutions.

Search, Watch, and Bid from your iPhone. I thas a customized interface for the iPhone while leveraging key features such as page transitions, number pad-pop up, etc.

• 2nd place winner (of an 80 GB Apple iPod Video) was the Vista sidebar tool by Intelligroup Ltd.

It provides notifications, at-a-glance information for your watching, bidding and selling lists, as well as feedback score and more from your Vista sidebar.

• 3rd Place winner (of an 8 GB Apple iPod Nano) was the My eBay Quickfeed for iGoogle by vallaeys from Top Tier Inc.

It features an RSS feed for iGoogle that automatically syncs with eBay to always show you the most up-to-date information about items you are watching, selling or bidding on, and lets you add a saved search.

• Developer community winner (of an iPod Shuffle) with 73 votes and 53% of the total was Auction Watch gadget for Vista Sidebar by Ty Kroll.

eBay Auction Watch allows you to track and bid on eBay auctions directly from your Windows Vista Sidebar. Integrated with your My eBay Bidding and Watching lists, details are updated automatically and seconds count down in real time.

Congratulations to all of these developers!

- Delyn

eBay Marketplace for Facebook app launches

For those eBay members who are into the latest social networking craze on Facebook (be careful poking each other out there, folks), you may be interested in checking out the eBay Marketplace for Facebook application. It launched last week and popular industry blogs GigaOm and Mashable weighed in and gave their $.02.

With this Facebook plug-in, you can showcase what you've won (or lost!), share your watched items with trusted friends in your Facebook network, and even push items onto their eBay watch lists if you think they might be interested. Browsing your friends' items puts a whole new spin on the eBay experience.

Rolf Skyberg, part of our Platform & Innovation team here at eBay, was involved in launching this application. Rolf also recently blogged about why he thinks embracing social networks is like peanut butter and jelly - read his post, and see if you agree. :-)

-Delyn

Developer SilkSystem Solutions puts eBay on the iPhone

eBay shopping just got a little sexier. Thanks to SilkSystem Solutions' recent launch of the first eBay Compatible Application for iPhone, people with iPhones can now bid and search on eBay. SilkSystems is a member of the eBay Developers Program. As you all know, Apple opened the floodgate to iPhone mania on June 29th at 6:00pm PT, and eBay was there. Sunny Li, who works for the eBay Developers Program wrote this review of this iPhone web app - try it out for yourself! SilkSystem quickly jumped on the iPhone opportunity by creating an eBay shopping assistant application that enables iPhone users to find items, bid, view your eBay Watch List, and check auction status. See this ZDNet blog post for more feature details. This iPhone application really speaks to the eBay crowd, especially the diehard fans, because it is a "must have" shopping assistant if you want an upper hand in winning an eBay auction. The application user interface is optimized for the iPhone experience so if you find the zoom function cumbersome, worry no more since zooming in/out is not necessary with this visually optimized application. For those users who have way too many passwords in their heads, that is no longer a problem either because you are only required to use your eBay password once. The bottom line is -- the iPhone is great, having the ability to shop eBay on it is even better. Equipped with an iPhone and an eBay application that is designed to help you win auctions, you can now go win  yourself another iPhone on eBay. - Sunny

eBay fun with Widgets

There's lots of buzz going on these days about widgets and how they can be useful for online commerce. eBay sellers and buyers in particular can make use of the eBay To Go widget to feature their store, their listings, a particular keyword or even those fun and wacky items for sale that are part of that "only on eBay" experience - maybe you even want to brag online about how you won it on eBay!

If you're not familiar with widgets, make sure to check out this recent BusinessWeek article featuring our own Max Mancini, head of Disruptive Innovation and the Developers Program here at eBay. In addition, Rob Cross also recently attended WidgetCon  in New York City, and had the following recap to share about the conference.

Widgets -- they can make your online shopping experience that more compelling and help reach buyers in new places.

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I was in New York City on Wednesday to attend the WidgetCon Conference, the first conference designed specifically for widget marketers.  My goal for being there was to better understand the widget marketing ecosystem and how eBay can better meet the needs of developers and technology platforms.  I see a huge potential for this segment - the modularized web - and want to make sure eBay is positioned to effectively participate.

Compared to most conferences I've been too lately (including ours), this was a much smaller event, with about 100 people attending and only one agenda.  However there was a lot of great discussion as everyone shared how they participate in the space and the issues they're facing.  The full agenda is here.

One the main themes I heard was that widgets represent a unique opportunity for you to create an effective and lasting dialogue with your users.  This is different from search engine marketing and traditional online marketing.  Users have offered to put your widgets on their page - don't waste that opportunity!  Keep the content fresh, interesting and useful.  For eBay developers, this is actually easier because most of our content is listings and you can always put new information in front of people.

Another key theme was that companies are having challenges effectively measuring and tracking their success in this distributed environment.  When a developer creates a widget for Facebook's network, how do you measure success - viral spreads, click-thrus, user interaction, longevity of the user connection?  There are a lot of unknowns here.  For eBay, we compensate developers for bringing users to our site through the Affiliates Program, but we'll have to continue to investigate the value of a widget.

I continue to believe that eBay is on the right track to help developers take advantage of widget marketing.  Our Shopping Web Services platform is specifically designed for this type of development and our Affiliates Program offers great monetization opportunities.  We still have a lot to do to put all the peices together and expand our offering, but we recognize this and are trying hard to fill the gaps.

On a personal note - one pleasant surprise was that some old friends were also attending.  Ro Choy, now with RockYou!, and Sean Crotty, now with Mpire (an eBay developer), were both there and it was great to catch up.  Best of luck guys!

- Rob

Video Interview with 2007 PayPal Star Developer E-junkie

"Developers and merchants participating in the PayPal forums are actual merchants who are going to use the features, so any feedback I get from them is very valuable."

-- Robin Kohli, development lead of E-junkie, on how his service to the community pays off for new feature development ideas and adoption

Robin Kohli of E-junkie out of Tuscon, Arizona joined us at DevCon in Boston to speak about his FatFreeCart application, and how he built his tool to sell software and allow independent musicians to sell their music.

Listen to Robin's thoughts in his PayPal Star Developer Award interview (clip is 5:10 in length):

-Delyn

Video Interview with 2007 eBay Star Developer Mpire

"First and foremost, make sure you keep up to date with all the latest announcements. I recommend highly an RSS feed to the main developer community news ... they are very good about releasing good detail on the exact type of API changes that are forthcoming with plenty of advance notice."

-- Greg Harrison, co-founder and CTO of Mpire, on their advice for developers who are new to the eBay Web Services platform

Greg Harrison and Gary Kamikawa of Mpire out of Seattle, Washington joined us at DevCon in Boston to speak about their winning Shopwave application, and their integration with Shopping.com and eBay APIs.

Listen to Greg and Gary's thoughts in their eBay Star Developer Award interview (clip is 5:54 in length):

-Delyn

Video Interview with 2007 eBay Star Developer AuctionAds

"eBay's API, one of the strengths of it, in my opinion, is that it doesn't change tremendously. They might add new features, they might tweak a few things, but it isn't changing underneath us like some people's APIs do ... the API, the foundation, is so stable."

-- David Dellanave, development lead of AuctionAds, on the task of keeping up with changes to the eBay API

Jeremy Schoemaker and David Dellanave of AuctionAds out of Lincoln, Nebraska joined us at DevCon in Boston to speak about their affiliate service, and how they were looking forward to learning about useful services for eBay members at eBay Live!

Listen to Jeremy and David's thoughts in their Star Developer Award interview (clip is 5:01 in length):

- Delyn

Video Interview with 2007 eBay Star Developer SageFire

"Keep current on the developer website, any kind of changes to the API, read any kind of System Announcements, stay on the forums, and read the documentation over and over again."

-- Joshua McNeese, lead developer at SageFire, when asked for his advice for developers new to eBay Web Services

JP O'Brien, Ryan Wheaton and Joshua McNeese from SageFire out of Boulder, Colorado joined us at the eBay Developers Conference in Boston to speak about their award-winning YES! (Year End Summary) report, and how the idea came out of listening to the eBay Community and talking to sellers last year at their booth at eBay Live! They are at eBay Live! again this year in Boston, so make sure to stop by and say hello!

Listen to JP, Joshua and Ryan's thoughts in their 2007 Star Developer Award interview (clip is 4:35 in length):

- Delyn

2007 eBay Star Developer Awards - Cheers!

Just got out of the 2007 Star Developer Awards ceremony at lunch here at the eBay Developers Conference - this year, we went with a Boston-theme and had Norm Peterson and Cliff Claven present the awards. Here they are with our winner for Most Innovative Buyer Application, AuctionAds.

And the winners of the 2007 Star Developer Award are ...

• Most Innovative Application—Buyer  = AuctionAds, presented to Jeremy Schoemaker

-- For promoting efficiency using innovative caching techniques, allowing this affiliate developer to serve up 30 million impressions a month with only 200,000 API calls – an impressive volume of traffic per API call.

• Most Innovative Application—Seller or Merchant  = SageFire's YES! (Year End Summary), presented to JP O’Brien, Joshua McNeese and Ryan Wheaton 

-- For fulfilling a specified eBay seller community need of annual transactional history for tax and profitability analysis needs.

• Service to the Community = presented to Michael Berger of MyProSeller (community handle: slomike1)

-- Active and helpful PHP developer in Developer Forums answers newbie and veteran questions, which have resulted in numerous updates and improvements to API Documentation and platform notifications for the benefit of the entire eBay developer community.

• Best User Experience Design = Mpire’s Shopwave, presented to Greg Harrison and Gary Kamikawa

-- For development of new Flash-based online shopping visualization application. “If you don’t know exactly how to describe what you’re looking for, Mpire’s new image previews may be worth the thousand words you can’t find.” – TechCrunch

• PayPal Best User Experience Design = E-junkie’s FatFreeCart, presented to Robin Kohli

-- For the implementation of PayPal Website Payments Pro with the only cart which works inside the merchant's website (not in a pop-up) without having to install anything

• PayPal Service to the Community  = presented to Robin Kohli of E-junkie (community handle: E-junkie)  -- For his outstanding contributions and participation in PayPal's Developer Community

Congratulations to all of our 2007 Star Developer Award winners!

- Delyn

Developer Community Presenters at the Developers Conference

We've got six more sessions at the 2007 eBay Developers Conference being presented by members of our developer community (4 sessions were already held today). Some of our most popular sessions from previous eBay Developers Conferences, as voted on by attendees in our Conference Survey, have been presented by experienced developers using eBay Web Services.

In recognition of the popularity of these developer-led sessions, we held another Call for Papers this year in March. As before, we had a great response from developers with lots of high quality submissions.

I encourage you to check out the following sessions tomorrow to get a flavor from what it's like to develop with our platform straight from developers like you:

1. Jeremy Schoemaker - Tuesday, 9:00AM
   • 252A Search Engine Optimization
2. Eric Anderson & Kurt Davey, neoverve - Tuesday, 9:00AM
   • 257A Building Effective Online Storefronts
3. Grant King, Marketworks - Tuesday, 11:00AM
   • 254A Best Practices for eBay App Development
4. Ben Powers, Kurt Davey - Tuesday, 1:30PM
   • 257A Bringing Offline Business Online
5. Greg Gunn, DataUnison - Wednesday, 10:00AM
   • 254A What's Popular on eBay?
6. Pablo Barros, Infopia - Wednesday, 11:00PM
   • 259A End-toEnd Integration for PayPal's Website Payments Pro

Make sure to block off some time to catch these developers in action!

- Delyn

Getting Ready for DevCon in Boston: Entrepreneurs Make the World a Better Place

What is the environmental or social cost of doing business? With one innovative idea, entrepreneurs can improve the lives of millions of people.

"Making the world a better place doesn't have to be something you do after you ran a business for a while. It's something you're doing while you're running a business."

--Pierre Omidyar, eBay Founder and Chairman of the Board

Pierre will be a featured speaker at this year's eBay Developers Conference 2007 in Boston. (Register today!) In this clip from the 2006 conference, Pierre shares his philosophy on how businesses like yours can make the world a better place.

"Entrepreneurs who may be the greatest force for good on the planet."

--Scott Cook, Founder of Intuit

In this clip from his conversation with Pierre, Scott (a member of eBay's board) follows with two stories that illustrate the power of entrepreneurs.

I get really inspired watching these clips - can't wait for this year. Enjoy, and I'll see you in Boston!

- Delyn

Check Out the eBay To Go Widget

In case you haven't already read the news on Scobleizer or TechCrunch, we recently launched a slick Flash-based widget named eBay To Go (Philipp Justus just mentioned it in today's announcement as well). It takes about 20 seconds to create your own custom widget for your blog or personal webpage. This widget is built on eBay Web Services, the same open platform of API calls for interacting with eBay that we make available to our eBay developer community.

My favorite is the search widget, where you can add a widget to your blog or site that displays all the items for sale on eBay by keyword. Here is the widget for "pez dispensers":

Make sure you check out the video podcast of Stephen Chang from eBay's Buyer Engagement team giving a demo to Robert Scoble for his Podtech show. It is a nice tour of the features and functionality of eBay To Go. Looking good, Stephen! :-)

And the CODiE goes to...

Adam Trachtenberg of the eBay Developers Program recently posted about "the CODiE experience". (Yes, that's the silver award on Adam's desk bookshelf, in between the Masterview, RASCI the mongoose and the eBay apple).

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I’m proud to announce that eBay won a CODiE award for Corporate Achievement from the Software & Information Industry Association. This is like winning the Oscar for Best Picture, except that there are fewer celebrities at the awards gala, and you don’t need to worry about Harvey Weinstein.

The Corporate Achievement award is final award presented, and is given to the “corporation that enhances the overall development of the software and information industry.” Not surprisingly, competition was fierce.

Eighteen different companies made it to the second round of judging (most other categories have only four to six), and we were up against many industry leaders, including Amazon Web services, IBM, Red Hat, and Salesforce.com.

However, thanks to all the great work done by so many people, we were able to bring home the prize.

I had a fun time at the event, and it was a blast hearing “eBay!” called out from the podium, going up on stage, and accepting the award on behalf of eBay’s buyers, sellers, and developers. Thanks!

Web 2.0 Expo hits the mainstream

Back in my chair from Web 2.0 Expo last week. This event officially answered any lingering questions I had about whether Web 2.0 has hit the mainstream yet. This crowd of aspirational entrepreneurs grew from expected 4,800 to estimated 11,000 by the end of the event. Step right up! Who wants to be the next Kevin Rose?

Besides the WSJ article that broke first morning of conference, I enjoyed Kevin Lynch's keynote demo of San Dimas and John Batelle's chat with three entrepreneurs: Joe Krauss of JotSpot, Mena Trot of SixApart and Jay Adelson of Digg. Jeff Bezos also sparred a little with Tim O'Reilly (pictured at left) at the beginning, whose interview-style is entertaining in that excruciating, David Brent, avert your eyes kind of way.

Also, learned a few fun things, such as:

• Jay from Revision3 (pictured on the right here) talking about user "snacking" on video clip snippets that currently may happen mostly on a computer screen, but also that deeper video content and hosted shows are increasingly being viewed on devices like iPods and set-top boxes like DVRs

• companies are currently able to target content at individuals viewing pages (or more correctly their online clickstreams) without revealing PII (personally identifiable information) as opposed to just targeting based on the context of content of whatever page they happen to be viewing at the time. We're getting very Minority Report.



• adding a local dimension to your app can up your CPMs you can charge to the tune of 10X (a search for "attorney" costs $1.59 while the term "attorney in denver" nets closer to $10.00)

We also did the after-party circuit in San Francisco and checked out the FMP party at House of Shields, Snap.com party at TWO Restaurant and finally the netvibes party at 111 Minna bar and gallery. After all that fun, it was a little more challenging than usual to get back to business as usual in the office last week!

- Delyn

Give your Congressperson feedback this year!

With the April 17th U.S. federal tax deadline looming tomorrow, thoughts of many eBay members who run businesses and serve businesses on eBay turn to issues such as "How might new legislation and taxes affect my online business?"

In this clip from the 2006 eBay Developers Conference, Bill Cobb, President of Marketplaces North America, talks about eBay's position on public policy and legislation that could affect the eBay Community. Congress sees eBay members who are also their constituents as especially valuable -- because you bring valuable technology to their districts. At eBay, we believe you can use your value as power to help shape the U.S. policies that will carry our industry forward. Learn more by going to eBay Main Street, our government relations site.

Recapping the Certified Provider Fair in Salt Lake City

eBay held its second Certified Provider Fair at the eBay Customer Support center in Salt Lake City, UT, on Wednesday, March 14th. The purpose of these events is to expose Customer Support employees at eBay to the software and services available to the eBay Community from developers who have qualified to become eBay Certified Providers.

Over 300 eBay employees attended, including Top Seller Account Managers, Seller Outreach and OnRamp Business Consultants, PowerSeller Stores Support, ProStores Pre-Sales, Motors, Half.com, Listing Tools, and even our Trust and Safety teams. These teams are on the phone every day helping eBay sellers grow their businesses. Saving time and increasing profits is key to the success of every seller, so helping to pair the right solution with the right seller is vital.

Feedback from the eBay teams has been extremely positive.  “The CPs were especially helpful, and I have already sent some of my sellers their way,” said David Wallentine, Top Seller Account Manager.

They were amazed at the range of software and services available, including product sourcing, accounting and business management, listing strategy consulting, and research solutions. Brian Grow from eBay Seller Onramp had this to say, “I especially enjoyed meeting Certified Providers that I hadn’t previously heard of like JDT and Palo Alto.  Now that I know more about their products I’ll be better able to advise the growing eBay business owners I talk to every day.” 

Certified Providers just as thrilled to meet directly with these key influencers. “I'm sure both the vendors and the eBay attendees will all agree that the value created for everyone was immeasurable....” said Tobe Goldfinger from JDT Technologies, “including the trickle-down value for all those eBay sellers who will now be able get really useful information from their eBay contacts about what kind of solutions are available.”

“I was really pleased at the turn out and the response from the people who came into our little room.  I thought everyone was really receptive and excited about what our software could do for their clients, which is always fantastic to hear,” shared Chelle Parmele, Palo Alto Software.

Fourteen Certified Providers were onsite to showcase their solutions, including:

• Marketworks
• As Was
• JDT Technologies
• Terapeak
• EzLister.net
• JustDeals
• Worldwide Brands
• HammerTap
• Infopia
• CanDo
• Palo Alto Software
• KeepMore.net
• Channel Velocity
• Kyozou

To learn more about tools and services from eBay Certified Providers, check out the eBay Solutions Finder.

- Delyn

Listing tools for the Mac

After we posted our MacWorld write-up a few weeks ago, about the glossy iPhone demo (iPod meets Treo meets Mac OS X desktop) and developers we met with, it got me to thinking. The Mac faithful are everywhere - including eBay. If you count yourself among them, then this Cool Tool review by Alan Lewis of the eBay Developers Program is for you. It covers two listing tools for the Mac -- iSale and GarageSale  -- written by eBay Web Services API developers. (Mac fanatics among the eBay Community may already know that iSale is a two-time winner of the Apple Design Award).

I think that is the real beauty of eBay's open platform - tools for different OS, browser types, languages are constantly being created by our nimble developer community.

Take it away, Alan...

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Like many eBay users, I have lots of stuff "sitting in my garage" (actually, a spare bedroom) that I intend to sell on eBay, someday. I'm by no means a professional seller -- I don't have any employees and I don't buy anything with the intent of reselling it. But I do like to sell things on eBay to get extra spending money. Since I recently started using a Mac at home, I thought I'd give GarageSale and iSale, two leading eBay Mac selling tools, a try:

iSale

iSale recently won the Apple Design Award for "Best Mac OS X User Experience," and you can see why when you first launch it. The interface is indeed attractive, and I liked how it was laid out. The eBay selling "flow" is always difficult to build a user interface around, but iSale does a decent job of guiding the user through the process.

One key reason to use a desktop listing tool is that they often provide the ability to work offline and save drafts of items for sale. This is a key feature for me, because I rarely have the time to create a listing all at once. And indeed I appreciated how both iSale and GarageSale allowed you to save your listings at any point before they are complete.