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EBay will open a tool used by 700,000 of its merchants to external developers, the next step in an ongoing effort to promote the creation of applications for its online marketplace. For the first time, eBay will feature third-party applications within Selling Manager, a tool merchants use to manage their eBay listings, the company plans to announce Monday at its annual eBay Developers Conference in Chicago.

"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. Selling Manager is the most popular tool among eBay merchants, but so far has only featured applications created by the company. However, eBay now recognizes that it can't extend the tool's functionality on its own in a way that meets all of its users' demands and requirements, Mancini said.

View: The full story @ PCWorld