This week’s eBay Developers Conference in Chicago will present a brand new program that will allow developers to access just about any needed information from the auction company’s Web site. The new initiative, called Project Echo, will also offer a path to a marketing channel for their applications and the plan is to help eBay’s sellers with new features needed to better manage their listings and consumer information.

The testing period is expected to begin at the end of the year, during the fourth quarter and a beta version will surely be available at the beginning of 2009.

The program will provide a useful feature for all developers, which will be able to present their applications only to the interested potential customers, as the Echo will invite the potential clients to see pitches for the app and will not bother the others unless there will be something of direct interest. The idea came after many developers requested a solution that will help them promote and distribute their applications to the Web site’s sellers.

"We're taking our open [application development] platform to the next level," said Max Mancini, eBay's Senior Director of Mobile Platform and Disruptive Innovation, according to ComputerWorld. He added that the main concern involves helping sellers scale their business.

There will be a set of guidelines for the interested developers and they will have to reach a certain standard in order to be accepted. One of the demands is that the applications should have a free trial period of 30 days.