Project Echo: Marketing your Applications, eBay-style

Posted June 17, 2008 at 02:09 PM by Elisabeth Young

Section: Web, Web Apps, Websites

So you’ve just developed this killer web-application and you’re looking to cash in and make it to the big-time… what next?  Just bring it to the most famous web-market of them all: eBay.

As a web-auction company, eBay has pioneered the web-market culture, bringing together seasoned entrepreneurs, first-time sellers, hobbyists, rare item collectors, and those just wanting to grab a bargain. It again opens the market further, this time to software application designers and add-on creators.

eBay has just announced at the eBay Developers Conference that it will be launching a program that will allow application developers to access all the data that eBay’s existing online app for medium- and large-scale retailers, Selling Manager, already has. This new initiative – nicknamed Project Echo – will make sure that the developers will be able pitch their apps to just the exact customer profile they are looking for; so other sellers won’t be bothered with it.

Caveats include all developers meeting certain standards of “trustworthiness” and that all programs should have a 30-day trial period. One huge benefit from all this is that qualified developers will have access to “special APIs that are only available to people who integrate in Project Echo” – this according to Max Mancini, senior director of Mobile Platform and Disruptive Innovation. The project goes into testing Q4 of this year and is programmed to launch Q1 of 2009.

Read [WebWare]