Smoke and Mirrors

SA no more! | eBay.com

Woah! 3 months notice? Microsoft gets hell for giving people 5 years notice. If there was an earlier announcement, I supposed I missed it… but I doubt people would have paid attention until eBay published a definite end date for support.

And the wrinkle this post doesn’t make crystal clear I don’t think. eBay says it won’t be supporting SA anymore because the old API is going away. Well the old API is completely dead June 1. This means that not only will eBay be not “supporting” this product (which to me means answering support e-mails on the product), but the product will cease to function completely on this date.

If this is true, I can’t help but think this would mean a GMV hit to eBay.

Maybe we can get a clarification here from some of the eBay folks that frequent here.

Update: I did find this in the FAQs. I still think the wording is extremely confusing.
Most users see the word “API” and glaze over. I don’t think people will keep reading and intuit that because the API is different it will go away.

To me, when something will completely break after a certain date, you want to make that crystal clear. “Ending support” is not crystal to me, and that’s the headline, not something like “ALL USERS MUST MIGRATE WITHIN 90 DAYS OR YOU WILL NO LONGER BE ABLE TO RUN YOUR EBAY BUSINESS”, which is more like what is happening.

If you rely on Seller’s Assistant to run your eBay business and don’t realize what’s going to happen to you, then it will be quite a jolt on June 1. My bet? eBay will enable a back-door for their own products to avoid this.

Why is eBay ending support for Seller’s Assistant?

Seller’s Assistant relies on eBay’s API (Application Program Interface) to list items to eBay and receive information from eBay. Seller’s Assistant currently uses the original API structure which eBay introduced in 2001. In early 2004, eBay released a new API structure which provides broader support for more technologies and more developers.

Over a year ago, eBay made the decision to only support the new API structure and to end support for the original API structure. Support for the original API structure will end by June 1, 2006. As a result, all applications based on the original API structure, such as Seller’s Assistant, must be built on the new API structure in order to work with eBay.

When Seller’s Assistant was redesigned, it was built on the new API structure and subsequently renamed Blackthorne.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 8th, 2006 at 9:25 pm and is filed under eBay. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.