From Ars:
One of the few survivors from the dotcom bubble that we know today as “Web 1.0” has now announced that it is moving firmly into the Web 2.0 world. The online auction site eBay announced at the eBay Developer conference in Boston that it has opened up its three core businesses—eBay, PayPal, and Skype—to third-party developers. These new application programming interfaces (APIs) are being released as part of a limited beta program: attendees at the eBay developer conference will get preferred access.
John,
As you know eBay (including PayPal and Skype) has been an open platform for quite some time. Not sure this is really “new” news although it is always great to see eBay continue to incrementally open ups its platform.
Greg
API’s and extending the networks of these big players is what is going to keep them fresh as well as maintaining control over their user base.
It’s like affiliate marketing for software, if there is a user base in it for a small developer, it becomes worth extending their platform too, which maintains the market share for the brand in question, by extension and association with other peoples content.
Amazon figured this out a long time ago.