Vinny Lingham’s Blog

I did my first Webmaster Radio broadcast yesterday. Here is a link to the show.

Just some quick housekeeping notes:

1. I’ll be the guest speaker on WebmasterRadio.fm tomorrow at 4pm EDT - please tune in for the live broadcast.
2. Blog nominations have opened at MarketingSherpa for the Reader’s choice award. Please feel free to nominate your favourite blog!
3. Keep following Revenews as I will be posting a few more eBay DevCon blogs this week. I’ll also have quite a few photos to share from this weekend on this blog.
4. I’ve seen my traffic increase steadily on this blog, due partly to being on quite a few blog rolls. Thanks to my loyal readership for spreading the word of mouth (and for all the incoming links!). I also had the pleasure of meeting one of my readers at eBay DevCon, it was great that he just walked up and introduced himself (thanks Mark - nice to meet you!).

So I’m off to Silicon Valley tomorrow morning and then New York on Thursday, returning home this weekend - it’s been a long 3 week trip! For those of you who have emailed me and I haven’t replied to yet - my sincere apologies - I’ll make sure I get to them whilst on the flight home!

One tired Vinny in Vegas - over and out!

Ok - Just came out of the affiliate portion of the eBay Live Conference, and I’m authorised to reveal the following link to information on AdContext.

1. The program will be based on remuneration through the eBay Affiliate Program.
2. In addition, I’ve had some discussions with Chris Zaharias on his blog - I’m all pro, he’s con - let’s see who’s right in 12 months time!
3. Let me reiterate how impressed I am with what eBay have done, it’s one step closer to my blog last year on “The Future of Search Engines“.

This post follows my post on Revenews with the introduction to the eBay Developers Conference Keynote Presentation. I’m reporting live from Las Vegas on behalf of Revenews at this conference.

Alok Bhanot, Vice President of Architecture for eBay presented the Technical Vision for eBay.

“Technology Vision of a Trusted Ecosystem”

Building the Ecosystem – The evolution of eBay Technology Platforms

Alok discusses the evolution of the eBay Platform, very graphically and quickly – so I’ll skip through it.

Assets & Opportunities – Opening up the possibility space

Users are becoming more engaged with Blogs, Wikis, Online Communities & Social Networking. The implication for eBay must be that application features must be simple and flexible, and the user experience must be seamless across platforms.

Development infrastructure is becoming commoditized: Web Hosting, Lamp Stack, Developer Frameworks, Open Source. Features & Value to the end user become key differentiators. Commoditization is lowering barriers to entry and allowing more competition into this space.

Services are maturing: Notifications, New API’s & Mashups. Generically useful and flexible components are needed and will sit on some reliable infrastructure.

Monetization Models: The key here is variety. There is a lot more today whereas 5 years ago, there was no way to monetize traffic, today there is. eBay is looking at Pay Per Lead, Paid Search (with Yahoo) and Affiliate/Reward Programs. The implication here is that there are simple and clear monetization models with strong application support.

Addressing the implications:

Requirements: Features. Scalability, Revenue & Trust.
Capabilities (respectively): Services, Data Management, Monetization Capabilities, Reputation infrastrucure

Delivery Mechanisms: API’s, SDK’s, Testing Environment, Open Source Components, Sample Applications, Public Forums, Developer Support, Technical Documentation, Solution Marketing

Opportunities:

Ratings – displaying seller ratings on 3rd party sites
Payments – API via Paypal
Presence – availability of contact info
Call –between publisher and seller
Contextual Ad Placement on websites
Mobile
Relevant Search on Mobile
Trading on Mobile

eBay’s Vision:

Trusted Ecosystem – Community – Services – Platforms

Platforms:
• Manifest Products and Features
• Built using Services, potentially from disparate areas

Greg Isaacs takes the stage again to discuss the way forward.

eBay is focused on accelerating developer success. Included removing API fees. eBay’s marketplace is an ever evolving platform, with over 100 Seller API’s. Entreprise Mashups/Widgets allows developers to combine API’s to develop unique combinations. There are over 40+ buyer API’s which is compensated by the affiliate program.

Accelerating the buyer experience.

eBay Just Announced the imminent release of the following API Calls:

GetProduct API
GetSearchResultsExpress API
GetContextualKeywords API Beta
PlaceOffer API Pilot – Mobile
ShoppingCart API – White Labels
Prostores Developer Network

Just in case you’re not following the debacle, here is a link to the open letter from Eric Schmidt to Adwords advertisers.