social media and developer community

eBay has a long history of making Community feedback and input a differentiator for eBay's global marketplace, most recently with June 2006 launch of the Chatter blog, eBay Blogs and the eBay Wiki.

So, it's no surprise when the eBay developer community gets into the act. Nabit recently wrote me to tell me about their community hub page, which has links to their active blog and forum - they've even found their way onto the Developer area of the eBay Wiki.

As mentioned in the Web 2.0 community panel at DevCon, using social media (blogs, wikis, tags, comments, photo sharing, RSS) is a great way to drive awareness and traffic to your developer tool. These tools take communication that used to be done exclusively in email (the original killer app) to harness the attention of backlinks and pings and feeds for your business.

Upshot? Web 2.0 tools are just a different channel for communication that you are already doing with your customers. Try out some of the ways you can turn passive consumers of your tool into active participants with your tool.