Taobao.com further opens to developers

Taobao.com, China's biggest online C2C (Customer-to-Customer) marketplace, will adopt an "open" strategy by opening its databases of shop-owners on its platform and registered users, mobile commerce business and logistics system to third party software developers, companies and service providers, the company announced Wednesday.
Taobao will provide each partner with the Application Programming Interface(API), which will allow them to provide their softwares, products and services to Taobao.com's shop-owners and users, and help them to operate e-commerce derivative businesses, such as logistics and data analysis.
The company will inject 300 million yuan ($45.60 million) over the next three years in helping software developers and service providers with creations and innovations and build up a bigger e-commerce industry chain in China, said Zhang Yongzheng, CFO in Taobao.
As of the end of 2010, 110,000 software developers were registered in Taobao s platform as the website's software development partners. The website had opened more than 300 APIs on Taobao s platform to partners, said Wang Wenbin, vice president in Taobao.