I'm trying to build a really simple eBay application that will simply get a list of a users auction data and display it in OPML. 
The eBay API system is a bit like entering a giant maze. There's about ten different API ID's (currently I've got my DevID, AppID and CertID). I've got about five different passwords for different websites - the purpose of which isn't explained.
What exactly is so difficult? It should be superbly simple - I sign up, you give me a developer ID, I build clever stuff and send you more traffic. Numerous pages on their developer website which take me off down a complete blind alley or return 404s.
Web 2.0 lesson: developers make your service more valuable. I have a big to-do list of services that I'm hacking around with. And I have only a limited amount of time. When it's a choice between supporting a service that fucks me around and fills my inbox with crap and building something that has a nice, cleanly documented API, I am choosing the latter everytime.
If you want developers to build stuff using your API make it simple, intuitive and well-documented. We don't want to read a 500 page PDF about your API - we want a short page documenting each function and showing an example call. That way we can worry about the stuff that really matters - politics, puppies and pretty flowers - and not get pissed off at the intricacies of your API.
To see this in the widget space, compare the procedure that one uses to develop widgets for Google IG or Netvibes with that for Windows Live.
Developers should be seen as partners within the economy of attention. Fuck around with our attention spans and we won't even bother playing the game - your pesky API will drop further and further down our ever expanding to-do lists.
