X.com: Paypal's Social Network for Developers
Last November, Paypal rolled out a new social network specifically for their developers called the Paypal X Developer Network. This is a smart move by Paypal to grow it's developer community. They must be taking a note from Steve Ballmer's "Developers, Developers, Developers...." and understanding that if they really want to grow their platform it takes the support of the developers.
Paypal has always had a large developer community around their platform and I'm sure this is going to be a hit with them. However, it will be interesting to see how many new paypal developers they will attract. I personally didn't like Paypal's previous developer site and from my initial review X.com looks to be an improvement by doing a better job of promoting it's suite of APIs and tools and also giving it's community of experts a platform to mentor and teach others.
One thing that I find interesting is they have included a level and point system for their members. I assume that points will be awarded for asking and answering community questions and the members will be able to "level up" after reaching determined membership goals. Another developer community that has used a system like this is StackOverflow and it has helped to promote an active community by turning the process of asking and answering questions into a game.
As a developer who specializes in Google platforms, I'm more inclined to use Google Checkout in my applications. I find that Google Checkout is cheaper and easier to integrate but the one requirement is the user must login or create a Google account in order to make a payment. Paypal prefers that user's create a Paypal account to make a payment but they do not required it. I believe that for a majority of online users this isn't an issue and they will create an additional account if they need to. However, I also realize that we should give our users as many methods as possible to make a payment and not solely rely on one platform.
If you're a Paypal developer let me know what you think about X.com and if you think it's going to broaden Paypal's developer platform.
