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Ebay (finally) gets it

Fred Oliveira on November 15, 2005

Web Services It came as a surprise yesterday, and admittedly a positive one. Ebay is announcing that they will stop charging developers for access to their APIs. Well it’s about time they got it, I say. Opening up their APIs means they’ll follow - even if late - the bandwagon of successful services that allow developers to build on top of, usually resulting in extremely useful stuff.

I’ve always said, and keep insisting on the idea that service openness is what gives a business leverage over another. By allowing 3rd parties, now for free, to build applications using the provided API functions means for two things:

  • A plethora of new applications and websites using Ebay’s API will pop-up, which will eventually drive more people to their website, thus resulting in more sales and conversions
  • They may end up getting fresh ideas on how to expose their auction information and, if they continue to be smart about it, learn from the things people are in fact using and build new business ways off of that data.

It is all about allowing other people to be creative and use their own ideas on your functions. The relationship benefits between site (or service) and developer is two-way. The site gets more sales, the developers get more to build cool stuff on. And if you don’t believe the preaching, think about why Flickr got so successful so fast.

Oh, and Edgeio (soon, very soon now!) is going to have loads of developer information because we “get it” too. Prepare to roll up those mashup and code sleeves.


Comments on this post

andr3

I agree. Open webservices have certainly helped others spreading their brand all over the place.. Amazon, for example.

And Fred, you have a typo in the Edgeio link. Thought i’d let you know. ;)

Fred

Amazon is one of the best examples, like Flickr which I mentioned, of how an open API can get everyone building cool stuff. Even I have a couple of things based (at least partially) on amazon’s functionality. Plus, ECS is one of the most complete web services out there. They allow just about any kind of information to be accessed through their functions.

Re typo: Woops, fixed. Nice catch :-)

William

An open api does not make a broken model better. Ebay works becuase they have no competitors. The internet is a medium that is about evoltion and revoltuion. Ebay knows that there is someone out there creating the application that will ulimatley comptere with them. An open api to a business model that many would flee from if there were an alternative is a finger in the dike approach to a modle that has tidal wave of problems. The oepn api is a temporary patch, an illusion to scare off the non rebels that will pay attention to the illusion.

Fred

So this little birdie told me that real competition isn’t that far away. But that’s all matter for a different post in a couple of days (literally).

You do hit several nails I’ve been talking about in the head, though - most importantly the fact that people are unhappy about the way ebay works. The API is a patch but still, the point of the post is to point out that they are finally coming to terms with what should be done (even if they’re doing it way too late in the game).

Adam Trachtenberg » Blog Archive » Opening up eBay one free API call at a time

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