innovate – Stay N Alive

Category: innovate

Ebay Suggests Identity API – Can They Do it Alone?

Posted on by jessestay

Paypal X Innovate 2009Ebay’s CTO, Mark Carges, today announced at Paypal X Innovate plans by Ebay, Inc. to begin incorporating the Paypal login process as an identity platform for consumers to eventually open up to developers.  The platform, Carges said, aims to use the existing Paypal login ID which includes address and phone number verification, bank account attachment, and more to identify individuals as real people.  He stated Paypal already goes through great lengths to protect these users’ identity, suggesting this was a natural move towards identity in the cloud.

The move makes sense, but searching Twitter during the Keynote revealed a different story.  Audience members are skeptical, stating things like “scary morning talk by the Paypal CTO. all your ID belonging to us. a closed OpenID?” and “wonder if this is what @timOreilly is afraid of – platforms becoming the OS?”.  In many ways these audience members have a point – is it possible for Paypal to go alone in this identity space when they could either be leading or joining existing identity efforts such as OpenID?  I may be wrong but I do not recall any mention of the word “open” in his proposal.  And when he mentions things like “they are working with Government” it gets a little scary that a single company may control all this along with government.

At the same time, maybe this is the solution.  Will the solution to identity be a closed platform that has devoted ways of verifying identity like Paypal and Ebay can provide?  Does the web need a “more secure” closed platform to finally solve the identity problem?

I’m very interested to see how Paypal progresses on this.  My hope is that they either lead or join existing open standards in this effort, and rather than taking this alone they approach others.  A platform is always a good thing, but a platform is not “open” until it is based on open technologies and the technologies themselves are built by the community.  This is especially applicable in the identity space.

Paypal’s CEO yesterday reiterated that through the years payment itself was controlled by a few big entities.  Paypal’s vision is “Into the hands of many” , intending to pass that control to the developers.  He even compared it to Linux and how the future is in the community and no one company having control.  My hope is that Paypal maintains this standard in the identity arena.  Based on their vision so far it looks hopeful – let’s hope they don’t feel the need to take the Identity platform alone.

When it’s uploaded you can listen to the whole Keynote in my Cinch folder.

"X" Marks the Spot for New Paypal Development Platform

Posted on by jessestay
“X”. It’s a common variable used in many a code base.  It’s one of the most common variables of any code base.  It’s what counts.  That’s what Paypal wants to become in the hands of developers, as they stated in their kickoff Keynotes this morning at the Paypal X Innovate developers conference in San Francisco this morning.  Paypal is bringing back the name of their original developer platformed, called “X”, to introduce new, easier, and better ways of facilitating transactions for developers.

Paypal has big visions for their new payments platform.  As Ebay CEO Jon Donahue stated, “I believe Paypal will be bigger than Ebay because Paypal can power all e-commerce”.  It would appear any rumors to Ebay selling off Paypal may be bunk in the eyes of their CEO.  Together, Paypal and its customers are working to release the next wave in payments integration. Today Paypal announced a new adaptive payments platform in which developers are now going to have the capability to integrate into their own applications.  Among the examples shared:

Integration of Paypal into your online banking experience — an example was shared of a bank enabling you to pay your friends by simply visiting your bank’s website, entering the e-mail address of your friend, and sending the transaction to that friend through Paypal.  (I wish my banks allowed this!)

Facebook Integration – Payvment did a presentation of their software that enables developers and website owners to integrate an entire shopping cart experience via just a simple snippet of Javascript code.  They also announced that they are open sourcing this software for Facebook developers to also integrate this same shopping cart experience into their own Facebook apps.  (This is very valuable!)  I’ll try to do an interview with them tomorrow.

Sun and Java Integration – Sun Microsystems did a demo of their own sharing how they were using Paypal’s X Platform in their Java store

Mobile – With the launch, Paypal is launching new mobile SDKs.  They did a demo on the spot integrating a simple payment code using Paypal’s iPhone SDK in XCode.  A couple drags and drops and copies and pastes and they had a fully-integrated payment experience on the phone.

In addition to the launch of their new platform, Paypal announced a series of new payment standards.  The payments will be adaptive, depending on the amount being charged, making a very appealing option for micro-payments to even very large payments depending on the size of the transaction.  In addition, developers will be able to decide who pays the commission, something different from their current developer platform, meaning the business itself does not have to pay the commission.  The commission can be paid by either the seller or the buyer, ensuring new creative ways of facilitating payment transactions.

Paypal’s new X platform of course compares with Amazon’s Flexible Payment System.  Tomorrow I’ll do a post comparing the two as I’m able to gather more data.  With the new platform it would seem that Paypal is putting the pressure on Amazon and stepping up the game of finally getting rid of the cash in your wallet in favor of much easier payment services in the cloud.

I look forward to sharing more from the conference.  I’m very intrigued by some of the Facebook solutions, as well as Twitter payment systems and I’ll share those as I get them.  I’ll also be watching the various ways other companies are utilizing the platform.

I truly believe we’re on the cusp of an entirely new wave of payments.  The competition is on in full strength at Paypal X Innovate and I can’t wait to see what comes of it.

Here are a few Cinch recordings I did of the keynotes in case you missed them:

Paypal X Innovate 2009“X”. It’s a common variable used in many a code base.  It’s one of the most common variables of any code base.  It’s what counts.  That’s what Paypal wants to become in the hands of developers, as they stated in their kickoff Keynotes yesterday morning at the Paypal X Innovate developers conference in San Francisco.  Paypal is bringing back the name of their original developer platform, called “X”, to introduce new, easier, and better ways of facilitating transactions for developers.

Paypal has big visions for their new payments platform.  As Ebay CEO Jon Donahue stated, “I believe Paypal will be bigger than Ebay because Paypal can power all e-commerce”.  It would appear any rumors to Ebay selling off Paypal may be bunk in the eyes of their CEO.  Together, Paypal and its customers are working to release the next wave in payments integration. Yesterday Paypal announced a new adaptive payments platform at x.com in which developers are now going to have the capability to integrate into their own applications.  Among the examples shared:

Integration of Paypal into your online banking experience — an example was shared of a bank enabling you to pay your friends by simply visiting your bank’s website, entering the e-mail address of your friend, and sending the transaction to that friend through Paypal.  (I wish my banks allowed this!)

Facebook Integration – Payvment did a presentation of their software that enables developers and website owners to integrate an entire shopping cart experience via just a simple snippet of Javascript code.  They also announced that they are open sourcing this software for Facebook developers to also integrate this same shopping cart experience into their own Facebook apps.  (This is very valuable!)  I’ll try to do an interview with them tomorrow.

Sun and Java Integration – Sun Microsystems did a demo of their own sharing how they were using Paypal’s X Platform in their Java store

Mobile – With the launch, Paypal is launching new mobile SDKs.  They did a demo on the spot integrating a simple payment code using Paypal’s iPhone SDK in XCode.  A couple drags and drops and copies and pastes and they had a fully-integrated payment experience on the phone.

In addition to the launch of their new platform, Paypal announced a series of new payment standards.  The payments will be adaptive, depending on the amount being charged, making a very appealing option for micro-payments to even very large payments depending on the size of the transaction.  In addition, developers will be able to decide who pays the commission, something different from their current developer platform, meaning the business itself does not have to pay the commission.  The commission can be paid by either the seller or the buyer, ensuring new and creative ways of facilitating payment transactions.

Paypal’s new X platform of course compares with Amazon’s Flexible Payment System.  Later today I’ll do a post comparing the two as I’m able to gather more data.  With the new platform it would seem that Paypal is putting the pressure on Amazon and stepping up the game of finally getting rid of the cash in your wallet in favor of much easier payment services in the cloud.

I look forward to sharing more from the conference.  I’m very intrigued by some of the Facebook solutions, as well as Twitter payment systems and I’ll share those as I get them.  I’ll also be watching the various ways other companies are utilizing the platform.

I truly believe we’re on the cusp of an entirely new wave of payments.  The competition is on in full strength at Paypal X Innovate and I can’t wait to see what comes of it.

Here are a few Cinch recordings I did of the keynotes in case you missed them:

http://www.cinchcast.com/user/default.aspx?albumUrl=Paypal-X-Innovate

Paypal X Innovate

Posted on by jessestay

Paypal X Innovate 2009I’ve been invited by Paypal to come out to San Francisco and participate in the Paypal X Innovate conference on Tuesday and Wednesday.  I’ll be in San Francisco starting tomorrow morning.  I’d love to meet you!  If you’re going to be at the conference, or in the San Francisco area, let me know and we can try to meet up if I have some time.  Maybe we can arrange a Tweetup or Facebook dev garage while I’m out there or something.

What is Paypal X Innovate?  It’s a conference for developers on the new Paypal X development platform.  At the conference, Paypal will be announcing their new platform, showcasing what you can do with it, and supposedly will be announcing a few surprises as well.  At the event you can expect to see speakers such as Tim O’Reilly, John Donahoe, and Om Malik, amongst many other industry luminaries interested in this space.  Paypal’s going all out at this conference!  I even hear there’s a special surprise gift for each conference attendee.

So if you’ll be at the event, come say hi!  If you haven’t signed up, the event is sold out, but there may be a few tickets available for walk-ins if you want to try the day of.  I’ll be covering everything I can while I’m out there both here, and on my Facebook Fan Page at http://facebook.com/stay. I look forward to seeing you!