Video: eBay pitches widgets, social commerce to developers

E-commerce company eBay relies heavily on outside developers--about one quarter of the commerce conducted on eBay happens through third-party tools.

The company on Monday kicked off its developers conference in Boston where it laid out the latest programs to entice developers to build add-ons and tools around the eBay auctioning site.

During the morning keynote speech, eBay announced new application programming interfaces to build eBay applications and tools to make widgets to embed eBay auctions in other Web sites.

The company also showed off a new desktop client application, called Project San Dimas, which is meant to give buyers a better eBay experience.

Max Mancini, eBay's senior director for platforms and disruptive innovation, talked about how developer outreach plays into eBay's bigger strategy of "social commerce."

And Stephen Chang of eBay showed off his creation: eBay To Go, a way of creating eBay widgets for a blog or other Web site.