The web as an operating system has always been a dream & today with websites shifting towards being platforms rather than just applications, the dream is getting a step closer towards its fulfillment! As a pioneer in such a shift strategy, eBay the world’s largest online auction website has renovated itself into a development platform where instead of users performing transactions using the eBay online interface interacting with eBay directly, they can communicate directly with eBay’s database in XML format using the APIs from anywhere.

“Rather than go to eBay to auction, vendors are asking how they can embed the eBay auctioning system into their own procurement system or delivery system, SAP is using [eBay] to sell its excess inventory. It’s really interesting that we’re starting to see sites as platforms, as outsourced processes.” - Ron Schmelzer, senior analyst at ZapThink LLC, Waltham, MA.


During the 15 years of operation before launching the APIs, eBay noticed how impractical it’s for large businesses to fill out forms for every single item to be listed & that sparked the idea of a creating the APIs back in 2000. Since the initial limited launch of eBay API & the public launch in 2003, developers have created around 4,800 product-oriented applications giving them the chance to decide how to use eBay in the most convenient approach. But it was not until later with the new extensions & platform enhancements, when the functionalities of the APIs evolved a notch enabling developers to build sophisticated commercial solutions into their applications, which to whom eBay credited about 25% of its listings. (eBay Developers Program, 2007-2010)

By dividing its APIs into 2 main types, eBay is enabling remixability where APIs allow the data to be uniquely addressable using the crowd intelligence. To provide a multiprotocol support, APIs either fall into the Shopping Web Services which are intended for lightweight read-only type of search which eBay says it has increased search speeds up to 16 times over the previous APIs and made it easier to for developers to create buy-side applications, or it can be under the Trading Web Services which are intended for heavyweight read & write transactions functionality that call for token-based authentication such as listing items, retrieving seller status. The first type is practical for buy-side applications that consume public data while the later is useful for sell-side applications that consume private data. (Sherman,2010)

eBay platform latest improvements is addressing the increasing use of Web 2.0 technologies to develop web applications; therefore, developers can use JavaScript, JSON, AJAX, or Flash/Flex to interact with eBay servers directly via APIs. eBay is allowing developers to list their applications in its directory & users can rate them presenting web 2.0 business model at it best. eBay is taking up on web 2.0 but it will have to go much further before its platform lives up to the dream of the web operating system, starting with a better support for developers especially the beginners, increase its promotions and enforce providing reference implementations, developer keys, documentation.

Have you ever tried developing an API for eBay? How satisfied are you with the level of support eBay provides? Have you used eBay via its APIs? Do your prefer using it more than the website itself? Share your story with us.

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The eBay: Going once, going twice, SOLD! by Najla AlNomair, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 Australia License.