Project San Dimas: eBay's Desktop Application

A number of key developments to note for eBay (EBAY) watchers:

Project San Dimas is suppose to be eBay's new and potentially disruptive desktop application. In other words, San Dimas is a program that resides and runs from your own hard drive but uses eBay's extensive breadth of API's to bring you the functionality of the website along with new desktop-only features. The primary advantages, apart from the added features, are that the application can be designed from scratch (as opposed to having to work within the boundaries of a browser), that the application supports offline use (such as listing an item offline which then syncs automatically when online), and that it offers users a much higher degree of customization.

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The eBay Desktop concept has been in the works for ages. eBay were already showing a rudimentary desktop prototype back in 2004 at a Macromedia MAX event where they were a sponsor. But knowing eBay, it took another short 2 years until mid-2006 for a more formal project, San Dimas, to get started. Another six months later, and with the integral involvement of Adobe and EffectiveUI, we finally saw the first operational version of San Dimas at the Adobe Max event in October 2006. But then another long quiet period emerged where eBay, using the talent at Metaliq, presumably redesigned and rebuilt the application several times over. Finally, in June 2007, a restricted San Dimas beta was launched although we still have no visibility on when the a public version might launch.

Despite the much-too-prolonged process to get this application off the ground, I am excited about the eventual availability of an eBay Desktop application. Having a neat, attractive and eBay dedicated program that can enhance the buyer experience while offering a completely new way to access eBay listings is great news at a very opportune time. In addition, this application could potentially offer eBay the opportunity to test the viability of new features in a low-cost, low-risk environment before rolling them out on ebay.com.

Now, let's hope we don't spend another 3 years testing beta versions.