Mashups

Mashups are playing a big role in what people are calling Web 2.0. The term was new to me when a co-worker mentioned them. At the I put the term on my list of things to check out and moved on. Well, I finally got around to looking in to what the buzz is about.

The idea behind a mashup is quite simple even if the implementation is difficult. A mashup is the combination of two or more software tools that when brought together for a new tool. The first mashups that I encountered used Google Maps and was done put together by Paul Rademacher. He combined house listings from Craigslist and mapping technology from Google to create a separate site that displays the location of houses for sale on a map.

The excitement for mashups stems from the availability of these building blocks all over the web. Google, Yahoo, Amazon, and eBay are all providing users with the ability to programmatically interact with their services and to combine results with any other tools. The only limitations on mashups are only those imposed by a programmer's imagination.

Has anyone managed to monetize a mashup? As far as I know, no. At least not directly. The popularity of a successful mashup will certainly attract web traffic, but how you convert this traffic in to sales is not something I've seen done yet. The best success story I've read about is Paul's. Shortly after creating his housing list mashup, Google offered him a job.