Source: Sun Developer Network
“The eBay Developers Program started in 2000, mostly by accident,” said Greg Isaacs, developer of the eBay Developers Program. “We found out that there were commerce sites out there using our infrastructure — basically screen-scraping HTML to use the eBay resources. So we started supporting development on the Java platform and other popular technologies for building web applications. We’ve since opened it up with web services over the last two years.”
Isaacs reports that 18,000 developers joined the program in the more than three years that eBay has officially offered it. In addition, more than 1500 applications are up and running, accounting for an extraordinary 70 million API calls a day.
“The way we see it,” said Isaacs, “eBay isn’t just providing a service — we’re providing a proven, robust global platform for e-commerce. And the way we know it’s robust is that we build our own front ends on the same infrastructure, using the same APIs and services.”
The eBay vision includes the whole applications ecosystem: eBay itself, its users and customers (whether Buyers or Sellers), and application developers. The eBay Developers Program and events like the eBay Developers Conference in San Jose are an outgrowth of this vision, a necessary link in the chain that sustains and grows this global platform.
The majority of participants in the eBay program work for small to medium-sized companies, averaging 10 to 20 developers per shop. Like eBay, the developers are capable of quickly evaluating opportunities and developing capabilities to enhance the value of the eBay platform — beyond just buying and selling goods.