Once upon a time, developers who needed to access eBay's application programming interfaces (define) in order to connect to the auction giant's selling platform had to pay.
No more. As of today, Ebay will no longer charge for their use.
"The reason we're doing this is [because] we've been very successful in terms of acquiring developers and having them add value to eBay buyers and sellers and we wanted to continue that success," Greg Isaacs, director of the eBay developers program, told internetnews.com. "Our slogan is now innovation without barriers. We've now removed the economic barriers."
eBay Trading Web Services::
eBay Trading API. Call Reference Version 575 Please see the eBay Developer Documentation Center. user selects a product by its ID, use the ID as input
http://developer.ebay.com/devzone/xml/docs/reference/ebay/index.htmlHOME |
eBay Developers Program: November 2006::
Keep up to date with the latest API documentation at the eBay Developer Documentation Center. Developer Impact: In the API, there are many similarities
http://ebaydeveloper.typepad.com/dev/2006/11HOME |
There is one catch to eBay's free API offer. Developers will have to use the new unified schema that eBay announced in February 2005 as a replacement for the legacy schema set to expire in June of 2006. If they stick with the legacy schema, they will still be charged at the previous rates.
eBay Developers Program: Developer Community::
Video Interview with 2008 eBay Star Developer Award Winner Z-Firm to our developer community - the reason for the success of the eBay API platform.
http://ebaydeveloper.typepad.com/dev/developer_community/index.htmlHOME |
Schema help define how developers make API calls to eBay's platform, as well as define how eBay delivers data, based on what's being requested. The move to the unified schema is intended to allow eBay to roll out code much faster and provide faster support.
When the developer API was originally launched in 2000 it came with two costs built in: a membership fee and a per API call fee.
By eBay's count, its Web Services platform currently facilitates 45 percent of all eBay listings and supports 2.5 billion API calls per month. The developer program itself now has 21,000 members and over 1600 third party developed applications.
Isaacs said the benefits of having a free API outweigh the revenue that the paid API brought in. "We think we'll get a lot more indirect benefit in terms of new users who are selling things and buying things then any direct revenue we'd get."
Existing eBay developers will however get some form of rebate.
Issacs said developers that paid a membership fee will get their money back on a pro-rated basis.
In a bid to entice developers to jump on the free API offer, eBay also announced the eBay Developer Challenge 2006 today. The program will award prizes for the best application developed either by an individual or as part of an open source team effort through eBay's Community Codebase project (codebase.ebay.com ).
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