Next Generation Shopping

PayPal is ready to give away $25,000 to seven Facebook developers who create innovative applications that utilize the Facebook platform and the PayPal API.  The following is a break down of the awards:

• Grand Prize (1) - $10,000
• Second Prizes (2) - $5,000
• Third Prizes (4) - $2,500

Check out the comments on this Mashable post as their has been some controversy over the rules of the contest, which have just recently been updated (better for the developers).  More about the new terms on AuctionBytes.

Today wraps up the final day of a fantastic eBay Developers conference.  The conference was a great success (with the exception of a lunch-time skit that went ary), and if you can believe it a better time than Vegas!  Ok, now I’m probably just lying.  Anyhow, Boston was a great time.  Below are a few of the most interesting highlights from the conference. 

• Adobe demoed their Air and Flex technologies.  Flex Beta 3 was unveiled for users to begin developing with.  Some really fun apps and aesthetically-pleasing  components have already been created.  Check out this one called DisplayShelf.
• eBay’s Project “San Dimas” was demoed by Alan Lewis. They’ve opened up beta-testing availability to all those at the conference.  I hope to be checking it out first hand shortly.  For those who have never heard of it, the project showcases an enhanced user interface experience.  Where eBay lacks Web 2.0-AJAXY-MacOSX GUI fun, this picks it up and more.  The backend technology is Adobe’s Air and Flex so tons of cool effects are used. More details can be found at the Project Sand Dimas blog or there is another writeup here.
• eBay launched a Shopping Web Services API which is a lightweight version of their current API that drops out all the bidding and user interaction.  This is for those looking to build shopping portals, etc.  Rob Cross put up a blog entry here.  As Borat would say, “That’s niice, I like.”
• Came a cross a web-based on-demand development environment called Bungee Connect.  It promises to make coding, from anywhere, much easier.  We’ll see if that holds true as I’ll be beta testing this shortly (thanks Brad)!  Curtis Gavin has a post here. 
• A session on Building Shopping Portals gave a good overview on how to utilize eBay’s API to create niche shopping websites and earn revenue.  The session broke down the online shopper into six groups: Enthusiast Shopper, Power Shopper, Surgical Shopper “New to Net” Shopper, Bargain Shopper, Reluctant Shopper.  The ones listed in bold were said to be the most important.  Bargain shopper was left out because of their low loyalty rate.
• Shopping.com had some great news about enhancements to their API, which I’ll be posting about later today.

There is tons more coverage over at the eBay Dev Blog. so check it out, and be sure to come out to the conference next year if you missed it.

“StumbleUpon Shopping” is what Nick Gonzalez of TechCrunch envisions after hearing of eBay’s recent acquisition of the social discovery service StumbleUpon.com.   This plays into the continued Web 2.0 trend of building a large userbase and waiting until you get bought out.  Of course, Stumble Upon offers much more than just a userbase, but is a good fit for eBay?  eBay has been criticized in the past for over stepping their vertical boundaries, specifically with the Skype acquisition.  However, they have molded their 3 majors (PayPal, Skype, Shopping.com) together very well thus far.  It will be hear the chatter about this recent StumbleUpon acquisition in the upcoming eBay Devcon.

Before jumping all over eBay, I’d recommend reading Scott Wingo’s very interesting analysis of the acquisition.

eBay recently announced the release of their eBay Express Shopping Cart APIs. Two new functions allow developers to create and update the contents of a shopping cart containing eBay Express items.

“Developers can use the new shopping cart APIs i.e., GetCart and SetCart to provide eBay Express shopping cart functionality off eBay and redirect to eBay at checkout time.”

The API is affiliate-enabled allowing affiliates (via CJ) to earn a commission; from my perspective the API would not make sense otherwise.

At first glance the API appears to be similiar to the remote shopping cart feature Amazon Web Services has provided for some time. Depending on the scenario it seems that it can be good or bad. Allowing the user to stay on your own site for longer is beneficial. This API might also work well for third-party software applications. However, it may also be confusing to some users as to what “cart” they are adding to, and who is actually selling the goods. Based on past experience with the Amazon API, I’d use caution when proceeding with this API and definitely measure conversion results.

Technorati Tags: ebay, ebay express, ebay api, ebay express api, shopping

buySafe just launched their API which has some nice functionality. Their API allows developers to “seamlessly integrate buySAFE trust signaling into retail Websites, marketplaces, and third-party shopping applications.”

I see a great usage for eBay API developers who want to show auction/marketplace listings and enable their end-users to feel safe about going through to eBay and making a purchase.

Their developer area has some good information about each of their API offerings. The main protocol of the Web Service is SOAP, which should make integration easy.

I’ll post more coverage once I’ve fooled with the API.

Read the full story here.

Technorati Tags: buysafe, web services, api, ecommerce, trust, marketplace, retail, ebay

The CSK development team recently announced that CSK beta 3 is out. And I must say, their Commerce platform, the CSK community, and their website itself looks like it is coming along quite well. I love seeing quality, open-source ASP.NET web applications. CSK is licensed under the Mozilla Public License (1.1).

They recently highlighted an e-commerce website built on CSK (1.0.2) called TieSource.com, as pictured below.

Personally I think the site looks really nice.

To followup with my previous CSK post, Dave had answered my question as I spoke with him about it briefly about CSK at Mashup Camp 2. To reiterate, my question was “Is there an easy way to calculate tax and shipping charges?”

The answer was that there is Yes, through StrikeIron web services. I believe depending on how much information you require, and how often you need to call the service it is eithier free or a charge per call. But I’ll have to double-check with him.

Technorati Tags: Commerce Starter Kit, StrikeIron, PayPal, ASP.NET

A while back I had posted a question about the ability to access eBay Express items via the Search function in the eBay API.  I haven’t checked out the call myself yet, but you can see on the eBay roadmap they have already begun to integrate the Express results.  Below are notes from the eBay Developer Roadmap:

• GetSearchResultsExpress (should be available now)
  The new GetSearchResultsExpress API call will allow developers to access Express-specific items, products and domain histograms.
• REST Support for GetSearchResultsExpress (September ‘06)
  Adds REST support for the GetSearchResultsExpress API call. Click here for details on the GetSearchResultsExpress API call.

I see this call as being be very useful specificly for mining marketplace item data from eBay.

Some recent activity in the world of “V-Commerce” has gained my attention. The fact is I have been intrigued by eBay’s acquistion of Skype for some time now… This along with some recent news in the “voice commerce” sector, have both played a factor in my decision to write an entry about the emergence in v-commerce marketplaces.

During eBay DevCon 2006, I attended a couple sessions regarding Skype and the Skype API. One example presented was a web application called JyvePro, which serves as a marketplace for experts. JyvePro is a nice example of Skype API usage, but is still in Beta so the user community is rather small. JyvePro allows expert consultants to connect with clients by voice and takes care of the billing for them.

How does it work?
Here are the steps from the How To section of the JyvePro site:

1. Download JyvePro
2. Setup your account to receive funds
3. Take Skype calls from potential Clients
4. Negotiate your price
5. Switch a regular Skype call to a paying Skype call on the fly
6. Market yourself and get more calls
7. Flexible payment options to cater to all types of professionals and service providers.

A more established player that seems to be a fairly direct competitor to JyvePro is Ingenio’s Ether. While this has nothing to do with the Skype API to my knowledge, an announcement yesterday that Ingenio is out of Beta did grab my attention. Since there has been signficant coverage of it around the net I won’t go into the details. Here are a couple highlights though:

“It creates a range of interesting e-commerce opportunities for experts who sell advice rather than products.”

A very interesting concept pointed out by Michael Arrington, who also covered the Ether launch on his TechCrunch blog yesterday.

“… all Ingenio applications capitalize on the voice-based commerce (v-commerce) opportunity by turning a phone call into a revenue-generating event” the press release states.

Another interesting concept in terms of generating ROI from such things as a blog.

You can read more about Ether’s launch, including the press release, from Greg Sterling’s coverage on the Search Engine Journal blog. Pete Cashmore also covered the official Ether release with some nice screenshots, but what is more interesting is that he also utilizes the service. A real world example of Ether in action can be seen on the Mashable website where you can arrange a call with Pete. He mainly offers “Web 2.0” consulting services, amongst others. These types of services could potentially pave the way for the future of consultanting, or at least as another avenue for gaining new clients.

v-commerce; Voice commerce is transacting using Internet communications. The voice traffic is carried over an Internet connection using Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) technology and this enables commercial transactions to take place using voice and an Internet connection.

Also called: Voice Commerce, Voice-enhanced Electronic Commerce, and voice-based commerce.

Technorati Tags: v-commerce, voice commerce, skype api, skype, ebay, ether, jyve pro, web 2.0

Blog entry from the eBay Developer Conference - Day 3: The Unconference

When I wasn’t with the Shopping.com team, I checked out the Commerce Starter Kit presented by Dave Nielsen of StrikeIron.

ASP.NET Developers can grab the Community Starter Kit for free, since it is an open-source e-commerce store. It is all ASP.NET 2.0 and uses SQL Server 2005 (Express Edition is fine) as the backend database. Modification can be done with Visual Studio 2005 (Web Edition is fine). It also integrates with the PayPal API to allow seemless checkout for consumers which is a very significant feature and also a great usage of the API. The backend admin features need improvement for any type of serious e-commerce merchants… But its open-source so the possibilities are endless.

Small e-commerce business owners can checkout some CSK hosting plans here at: Ultima CSK.

Developers can get the latest build and help in the development by heading over to the CodePlex Site.

I only had fifty minutes with Dave and the group so I didn’t get to ask all the questions I wanted. My main question was: Is there an easy way to calculate tax and shipping charges? (Eg. For shipping contact UPS / USPS / FedEx web services) Or is will it be possible in the future?

Technorati Tags: asp.net, visual studio, e-commerce, paypal api, web services, open source, commerce starter kit, strikeiron, asp.net 2.0

Blog entry from the eBay Developer Conference - Day 3: The Unconference

The majority of this day was spent with the Shopping.com team. It was great to finally sit down and chat with the Shopping.com team to discuss the future of the Shopping.com associate program, the Shopping.com API, and the effects of integrating into eBay.

Previously (Day 1), I had attended a session called: “Leveraging Shopping.com to Create New Revenue Streams.” The presentation was performed by Rob Goldman, the Chief Revenue Officer. His presentation gave a very high-level overview of Shopping.com, the API, and some example websites which had integrated the API. Some interest was seen in the program, and some good high-level questions were raised.

I had a 1:1 meeting with Ryan Doughan and Kristy Troup. Kristy is in charge of organizing and keeping tabs on the all of the partnerships. Ryan seems to be one of the major people behind the API development. After some chit-chat we exchanged some ideas about the future of the API. Finally, I had a sit-down with Josh Wetzel, director of strategic business development. He’s a great guy and really gave me a sense of where Shopping.com was headed, especially in regard to the whole Shopping.com to eBay integration.

Here is a summary of things I picked up from my own questions and those of others in the session as well as my 1:1 meeting. I put them in a Q & A format, although these weren’t the exact question and answers.

• Are there plans to push the program towards a more open developer community?
  They seem fairly eager to open up the partner program and API to a more widespread developer community. Suggestions were to first start with a blog and forums to allow developers to connect with each other.

• What is the major reason for holding up opening up?
  Basically since the model is CPC click-fraud is a major issue since merchants only can afford to pay for quality clicks. My personal thought here is that also comparison companies in the past have been protective of their data.

• What about functions for the API from a seller standpoint?
  This is something Shopping.com maybe interested in doing in the future if there is interest from sellers. An example would be insertion of new products or pricing information from the Merchant.

• Ability to access Merchants’ review data?
  No immediate timeline to implement this function for various reasons.

• Are there plans to change the structure of the API?
  Yes, at some point. Consideration is for REST format, but also for SOAP format if there is interest (both would be great!).
  
  
• Shopping.com Australia just launched. Is this available to access via the API?
  All the locales (US, UK, France, Germany, and Australia) should now be available through the latest API.

Shopping.com has plans to enhance the support of their developers in the future. The main initial idea was for a blog to allow better communications for developers and the team. In the meantime, if you have other questions or suggestions in regards to the API / Partner program you can leave comments on this post.

Technorati Tags: Shopping.com, Shopping.com API, ebay, ebay devcon, ebay developers