An Inside Look At eBay's Technology

endychavez writes with a CIO Insight profile giving a look inside eBay and its technology platform. The company has 40,000 outside developers working to increase its value and efficiency. From the article: "'They are way ahead of other companies' in terms of supporting developers, says one application builder... 'This a new wave of business,' says [another developer's marketing director]. 'eBay is a supplier, a marketing channel and a competitor. It's a weird arrangement.' ... 'If you can't split it, you can't scale it,' says Eric Billingsley, head of eBay Research Labs. 'We've made ourselves masters of virtualization.' ... eBay is able to publish a new version of its site every two weeks, adding 100,000 lines of code, all while in use."

Comments

So they've got stacks of developers

[Xargle]

...and loads of money. Yet last time I looked the site went offline every Friday "for maintenance". Please, ebay, teach us your highly innovative processes!

Not 40K eBay-employed developers

[Lord Grey]

From TFA:

... part of a growing community of some 40,000 independent developers, all building products using eBay's own application programming interfaces ...

In other words, that count represents the total number of people worldwide writing code that interfaces with eBay. That's very different than 40K developers working for eBay.

Re:in other ebay news

[Rik Sweeney]

I'm not bothered about the price hike, I'll just pass on the cost to the buyer as "shipping"

Re:40,000 developers with 100,000 lines of new cod

[simm1701]

I think poor is a gross over statement of their service level.

That their phone number is a closely gaurded secret gives you an inkling to their thoughts on the whole thing.

And just try to get into their offices to speak to someone!!! I tried once in order to deliver papers I had picked up from the local court - they wouldn't even let me in the building or send someone to the door to take receipt of the papers!! (Richmond upon thames offices, fairly well hidden but I used to walk past them daily on the way to work)