Thursday, 26 June 2008

eBay launches Developer Programme in SEA

eBay, the world’s leading online marketplace Wednesday announced the launch of its Developer Programme in Southeast Asia.

Active since 2000, eBay’s Developer Programme has approximately 70,000 members and offers developers around an outlet on the Web to monetize their applications.

The South East Asia Developer Programme follows the recent unveiling of Project Echo, a plan to integrate third-party applications directly into the world’s largest ecommerce site. The pilot of the scheme, available later this year, will make third party-applications and features for eBay’s Selling Manager feature directly accessible to eBay business sellers.

Selling Manager is eBay’s single most popular tool for business, with more than 700,000 subscribers. Project Echo is an extension of the existing opportunities for developers to monetise their offerings; third-party applications built using eBay Web Services already account for more than twenty eight percent of all eBay listings.

“We are very excited to announce the South East Asia Developer Programme and are looking forward to seeing some extremely creative and innovative concepts from local developers in the region. eBay is committed to enabling great third-party applications and opportunities – which in turn stimulate innovation and provide an enhanced experience for our eBay members,” said Dan Neary, Vice President at eBay.

To kick off the South East Asia Developer Programme, eBay is organizing a competition to encourage local developers in Singapore, Malaysia, Philippines and Thailand to experiment and innovate by building ecommerce applications for eBay and PayPal.

The top chosen concepts will be recognised with free development support and the eventual competition winners will walk away with attractive cash prizes; with the top three prizes being SGD10,000, SGD8,000 and SGD5,000 respectively. Other cash prizes for special merit projects will also be available.

Developers interested in creating tools that add value for eBay users and showcasing their applications through the competition should first sign up for the eBay Developer Programme and submit their concepts by Friday 18th July through http://developer.ebay.com.sg/devchallenge2008/index.html