Tech Shout!

EBay Inc. on Monday announced today that their developers program, which enables Web programmers to incorporate EBay services into sites will now be offered for free to its members.

Besides the free access to EBay application programming interfaces, web developers now will also get no charge membership to the program, certification and live technical support from Ebay.

Ebay’s free API calls are available only to program members placing calls using the unified schema that eBay announced in February 2005.

Greg Isaacs, director of the eBay program, said that by removing the fees associated with eBay Developers Program membership, it hopes to encourage new ideas and boost the growth of its developer and affiliate communities who are taking the eBay buying and selling experience to the next level.

EBay, Amazon.com Inc. and other major Internet companies make their APIs available to developers in order to expand their network among third-party sites. Yahoo Inc. and Google Inc. also have done the same in a bid to build a bigger network for advertisers.

EBay developers have the choice of promoting their applications in the eBay Solutions Directory, a directory of third-party applications designed to improve buying and selling on eBay.

EBay says its developer program has more than doubled since the last year to 21,000 members and more than1600 member-developed applications.