The eBay Developer Program blogged extensively during last week's Developers Conference. You can
read the highlights on AuctionBytes Newsflash, and read eBay's full coverage on its
Developer Program blog.
There was some interesting news about forthcoming changes that affect sellers. One change that will likely be welcomed is the ability for sellers to exclude countries they don't ship to on a granular level and to block buyers whose primary shipping or registered location is excluded.
In the fall, eBay will have buyer-seller communications go through the email messaging system: "all pre-sale member messages intermediated through eBay for safety." Last year, eBay had
announced it would impose "Safer member-to-member email via anonymous email forwarding," and then
went back and forth about its No Links policy. It sounds like next month we'll hear more on this topic.
eBay also plans to give Diamond PowerSellers who use the
Large Merchant Services API information about Best Match factors that sellers can control to improve search ranking of their listings. What isn't clear is whether LMS merchants are getting the same data currently available to all sellers, or greater information that would further boost their ability to show up higher in eBay search results above smaller sellers.
eBay will also be letting these large sellers list in the auction format - currently, LMS supports fixed price listings only. (See more on this
here.)
eBay was promoting its Selling Manager Applications "open platform" concept to developers. I expect we'll see developers eager to try it, as eBay promises them exposure to sellers. (One of developers' challenges has always been how to cost-effectively reach eBay users.) I'd also expect to see more
Product Pages on eBay, as it was promoting the concept of catalog.
Next month, eBay will officially announce the changes that will roll out in the September release as part of its promise to give sellers 60 days notice before making major changes.
eBay DevCon Gives Peek at What's to Come 
