What Is Mash-up?

If you are familiar with web site development and do not mind getting your hands dirty, there are new tools for you - content mash-up. Mash-up is a technology that allows you to quickly blend existing contents together. The contents blended may come from different sources or your own. The content can be in various forms from raw data, presentational graphics, to pictures. Some of the mash-up tools are sold as traditional packaged software that has to be installed on your computer; others are on-demand and run within your web browser without manual installation. The first and most popular content used for mash-up is perhaps Google Maps. In addition to traditional development tool kits, Google has introduced Mash-up Editor (beta) that does not require much of programming skills. I expect more vendors to follow this trend.

One can use mash-up to target any specific audience or niche market. Real-estate sites, such as, Trulia, mash up Google Maps with lots of valuable features that allow users to quickly locate and view summarized information of a property marked on the map. The other example is Yelp, which is a yellow page that allows users to comment on all kinds of businesses (e.g. restaurants, doctors, and so on). It mashes up both Google Map and directory data together. Clearly, it takes some thought and effort to provide additional value to their customers and make profits either via the incurred transactions or advertisement.

Mash-up can also strengthen your existing sites and bring in traffic at your door step. Do not forget that the site you build has value in itself. If your site attracts lot of traffic, someone may be interested in a partnership or some sort of affiliation, or even purchase the entire site from you. So, the key here is what values you can provide to drive up the traffic.

Do not worry about how you would put together computers and host your web site. There are many companies out there who have done this for their own business and are now eager to share with you the infrastructure they have built. They are willing to do so to improve utilization of their facilities, which in turn brings in a new revenue. This is commonly referred to as cloud. The leaders in this emerging industry include Amazon and Google. They will do all the dirty work for you at a reasonable price. Despite different pricing methodologies, be aware that each of them may impose certain technology limitation. You have to really know what you need and do some serious research, because, once the decision is made, you are likely stuck with it for a long time.

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