State of the eBay Platform: Great!

You may have noticed that eBay has been in the news a lot lately. Our news from here at the eBay Developers Program is that we are eagerly moving forward on all of our platform initiatives, and that eBay is making an unprecedented amount of investment in the platform. Here's a little bit of what is going on for the platform:

• Not only are we continuing to improve and expand our existing collection of eBay Web Services, we are also working on exciting new initiatives like Project Echo.
• We're serious about investing in platform across all the eBay properties: eBay, PayPal, Skype, and so on. In fact, we recently hired thought leader Mark Carges as Senior Vice President, Global Platform to look at all these pieces as a whole.
• We're gearing up for an excellent 2009 eBay Developers Conference! Watch the blog and the eBay DevCon site for more details soon.

These are just a few reasons why it's a great time to be a developer working with the eBay platform, and why the eBay Developers Program is the best ecommerce opportunity on the web! Learn more »

Highlights from eBay DevCon 2008

Cloud computing. Best in class customer service. Developers changing the rules of the web development. All these topics and more were covered at eBay DevCon 2008. It was another big success developers building applications for eBay, PayPal, Shopping.com, ProStores and Skype.

Industry keynotes from Salesforce.com, Mozilla, and Zappos.com, along with the Project Echo demo by Max Mancini and Rolf Skyberg were all huge hits with the ecommerce developers and entrepreneurs in our crowd.

Watch the highlights from the conference and hear first-hand from attendees about why they think the eBay Developers Conference is their must-attend ecommerce event of the year! Stay tuned for details about the next eBay DevCon -- coming Summer 2009. Watch the video »

Developer Impact of Oct 15 Announcement

Last week Dinesh Lathi, VP of Selling Experience, announced these new features and promotions. I've tracked down the developer impact for you.

New Look for eBay's Product Pages
In the next few days, we're making some important design updates to eBay's product pages (i.e. the pages you see when you click on "Matching Products" in search results.) Sellers' items will appear on these pages when they list with pre-filled item information.
Developer Impact:
For Media items, you need to adopt the new item conditions to display in the correct section of the new product page. Older item conditions or no item conditions are mapped this way:

• New --> Brand New
• Used --> Acceptable
• No condition specified --> Acceptable

The automatic mapping means that many items will be grouped in the "Acceptable" item condition, and it may be more difficult to get visibility. If your items are better than "Acceptable," it's a good idea to correctly specify the condition so you are sorted in the right section. Learn more »

Introducing Featured First, a New Listing Upgrade
We're also introducing a new listing upgrade called Featured First. Add Featured First to your listings for an opportunity to appear in the featured area at the top of the first page of search results.
Developer Impact:
You can specify Featured First using the same method you used to specify Gallery Featured. In other words, if you pass in GalleryFeatured after Oct 13 (for sites where Feature First is supported), your listing will be given the Featured First listing enhancement. Featured First is already live on CA, CAFR, UK, IE, DE, AT, CH and IT. Learn more »

New eBay Features and Promos

Today Dinesh Lathi announced these new features and promotions.

• New look for Product Pages
• Free Subtitle for Media from now through end of the year
• New listing upgrade: Featured First
• No relist fee credits for Fixed Price (starting Oct 22)
• Best Match sort for Store listings in Search Expansion Box

Check out his announcement for more details. See the Trading API Release Notes for details on how the features are implemented in the API. You can post any remaining questions in the comments.

Maximum Shipping Cost Values in Media Now Enforced

As Kristina Klausen reminded us, Media categories now have limits on the maximum shipping cost. Enforcement was turned on this morning.

For more information on the developer impact, see Developer Impact: Shipping Charge Limits in Media.

Simplified Package Types for eBay Shipping Calculator

eBay has simplified (reduced) the list of package types for the  shipping calculator. If sellers relist  or revise items with a deprecated package type, eBay will automatically map the  deprecated package type to an appropriate active package type. Simplification of the package types only  applies to the shipping calculator for the eBay US site and eBay Motors Parts  and Accessories.

In the future, eBay will require sellers to provide package  dimensions for the shipping calculator when it is used for large packages,  irregular sized packages, and all the UPS air services for packages. If sellers provide package dimensions for a  service that does not require dimensions, eBay will use the dimensions to more  accurately calculate shipping rates. We  encourage sellers to provide package dimensions whenever possible so that  shipping rates are more accurate for buyers. Learn more »