eBay Live is here! Preview and suggestions.

Here at ChannelAdvisor, we're all on our way to Boston today and tomorrow am for our annual trek to eBay Live.  We'll be at booth 423 if you want to stop by and say hello.

I've been pummeled this week with folks asking what we think will be announced this week.  Here's my take on what to watch for:

• We'll get an update and probably some tweaks on Feedback 2.0
• eBay has been testing lots of changes to "Finding" and Meg's been hinting to investors something is up there, so I suspect we'll see some eBay searching changes.
• (Fingers crossed) - I hope they are going to continue to do more on Trust and Safety.  SMI and Feedback 2.0 are a start, but there's much much more to do (account TKOs are a huge problem right now)
• San Dimas, San Dimas, San Dimas - this is a desktop app based on a Google Gears like product from Adobe that allows developers to use the same code on web+desktop.  An interesting prototype and display of the Adobe technology, but expectations that San Dimas is some kind of game changer are running a little wild right now.  I think it's a decent technology showcase, not a game-changer for eBay's core business.

The content this year is going to be interesting with some new focus on multi-channel selling. 

Here are some classes to consider attending:

Thursday

• 12:30 - top seller panel - Metrics to analyze your eBay business - this panel is packed with ChannelAdvisor customers

Friday

• 9am - I'm speaking at a class - "making the most of eBay Search"
• 11:30am - Panel - Best practices for selling across multiple channels - An "all CA customer" panel that we're really excited about
• 4:30pm - CA's Rick Watson will be presenting some advanced selling strategies that you won't want to miss.

Did I mention we're at booth 423?

Comments

[Alan Lewis]

Thanks for the San Dimas link. AIR (formerly Apollo) has been in development for much longer than Gears, and an important distinction between AIR and Gears is that the former allows applications to run outside of the browser, while the later extends the capabilities of the browser to add offline operation through local data caching.

Online/offline access is by no means the most important feature of San Dimas. The data on eBay changes so often that when you go offline, much of that data could get out of sync very fast. What I'm most excited about with San Dimas is that the user experience is not constrained by the browser. Even the most advanced AJAX or Flash web application that runs within the browser will still not achieve the same level of functionality and quality of user experience that can be achieved in one that is outside the browser.

Alan Lewis
Product Manager
Project San Dimas