eBay Launches Beta Of Apollo-Based Net App

The auction giant eBay has come a long way from its fledging days as a trading space for the most sentimental and unique of trinkets. More than a decade after its less-than-global premiere, the company now spans across international waters and is open to auctions and buy-to-own-now listings for the small and sentimental to the old and highly valued to the very big – cars, boats, and estates.

But the venue, though greatly expanded in size since its dimensions as an infant, has remained the same Web destination it’s always been. Everything looks a little bubblier and the site is definitely more featureful than before, but it offers the same shopping experience as always. And with the expansion, came chaos. Somewhat orderly chaos, but chaos nonetheless.

Search the site as a new arrival would, and you’ll understand quickly why chaos has been the keyword here three times. Okay, four.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful to manage the madness so that you could visit the emporium without having to know exactly what you are looking for upon reaching the front page? At least some of you would likely change your eBay shopping habits if things were organized in a way that didn’t overwhelm. So eBay is setting out to make things a little easier to deal with.

They plan to do so with a utility currently been referred to as “Project San Dimas”. A desktop application built on Adobe’s Apollo (eBay chose Apollo over Microsoft’s Silverlight), Project San Dimas is a program, currently in beta, created to provide eBay shoppers with “a new search interface,” offering members “a fun way to bid, access to your personal eBay history” and, yes, “much more.” (All too standard marketing speak, to be honest.)

Despite the stale copy written on the Project San Dimas website, the product does indeed look intriguing. While desktop apps will be a thing of the past some years in the future, a “net app” whose structure is based locally and which retrieves nearly all information from remote servers on the Web (a la iTunes) currently proves to be very popular. It allows the user to focus one application and one application only, whereas inside a browser of today’s standards one typically has several tabs active and is more or less multitasking.

Sure, some are very adept with a Web browser and have no issues or qualms about navigating good ol’ eBay, or any other marketplace, really. But as eBay grows, it becomes harder and harder to traverse for more people, and thus it’s only reasonable to assume some would like things to be a little more simple, a little more easy. Generally, a little more pleasant.

Project San Dimas is intended for that crowd. Those who want easy access to their information, their favorite storefronts, etc., will be the demographic eBay looks to attract with its new product. It could also be a sly first step by the company to make one of its biggest purchases to date (Skype) more integral to the shopper’s experience. And the seller’s as well.