What are these much fabled Mash-ups anyway? Everyone is talking about them but how much do we really know about these Mashups?

Wikipedia defines a ‘mashup as a web page or application that combines data or functionality from two or more external sources to create a new service.’ In much more simpler terms, A mashup could be website or web based application that uses different content from various sources to create a completely new product. This product will be a new service, an hybrid, having the features of its parent resources.

Mashing up is incredible. The excitement about these mash-ups are about the end result. Its all about the innumerable mix and match end products. You could mashup Madonna and Yoda and you get Yodanna, Mayoda, MaYo, Yoma. Its a virtual goldmine. Mashups, after the API (a public interface) floodgates opened up for every one to use, the possibilities have become limitless. There is and there will be a creativity explosion.

What I think is that mashups are probably one of the greatest adages to web 2.0. You have several different types of mashups. The popular ones would include consumer mashups( the most common variety that targets the general masses), data mashups, and business process mashups.

So what else is hot? Mashup analysts – so 3008! everything else - so 2000 and late!

We have business analysts, content analysts, system analysts. What do they do? For the most part, they analyze and streamline all the information that is available to them. They see and analyze what fits where and what does not. With mash-up technology growing exponentially since 2008, I think that it is only logical to have mash-up analysts. Many companies are thriving on ‘2.0′ technologies (like RIA widgets,mashups, blogs) and they allow their clients/users to create and share their creations themselves. So I’m guessing that there will be more technically qualified people who would take up roles of ‘Mashup Analysts’ in the future.
PS. Check this site out. www.stormberry.tv. I found this website in on of the mash-up networks. This allows users search youtube using the youtube API. The user can view the video, or they can add subtitles to the video using a web interface provided. These subtitles can then be translated to another language using Babelfish engine. This gets my thumbs up signal.

Tracking friend’s activities across social sites like Bebo, Digg, Facebook, Flickr, Hi5, imeem, Last.fm, LinkedIn, MySpace, Pandora, Slide, StumbleUpon, Twitter, Windows Live Spaces, Yelp, and YouTube, is of course another sign that we are all social and our social life is increasingly getting shifted to internet. Spokeo and FriendFeed are the two main social network aggregation services doing the heavy lifting task of tracking. The question I have is that do they simplify our online life by pulling all of the content into one centralized monitor or it adds to the complexity

Here are some comparisons points:-

• Spokeo is little harder than FriendFeed to bring friends accounts together if friends sign up for online services using multiple email addresses. FriendFeed has also this nice feature of setting FriendFeed RSS feed which can then be handed to all contacts.

• Spokeo is also largely a one-way tool - you can reply to and share updates, but only via email to the contacts. FriendFeed lets you share content from 28 different services via a single stream, and subscribe to the streams of your friends.

• Spokeo is very simple to set up- it can take in directly all of the contacts from Gmail, Yahoo, or Hotmail, and then go out to the 30+ sites it monitors and bring back any new content from people in your address book. In comparison, FriendFeed is more complex- it takes in Facebook friends, but only the ones who are also FriendFeed users, plus each member must specify which sites he wants to expose to others.

• FriendFeed publishes all of the activities in an endless stream which includes all of friends’ (including those who decide to make their content public) content-bookmarks, blog posts, status updates, pics, and videos. Spokeo’s appeal is to keep track of interesting friends who are prolific across the Web.

OuterJoin is big believer of OpenId and perhaps understandably, given our Yodlee background. The OpenID Foundation formed in June 2007 has a good early start- as of July 2007, over 120 million OpenIDs on the Internet and approximately 4,500 sites OpenID integration was reported. Membership has cut across the industry- individuals, students, non-profits, startups and industry giants.

A brief definition- OpenID is free technology that simplifies the online user experience by eliminating the need for multiple user names across Internet sites, enabling individuals to take more control and ownership of their digital identities. This user-centric digital identity technology helps users reduce the pain of managing dozens, even hundreds of usernames and passwords, and provides more control over what personal information they share with Websites when they sign-in using an OpenID.

I also see, OpenID concept promoting the decentralized, free and open standard in terms of personal information. The latest update I found was more than 10,000 Websites support OpenID log-ins, and an estimated 350 million OpenID enabled URLs currently exist. February 7, 2008 was historic day for OpenID as Google, IBM, Microsoft, VeriSign and Yahoo! joined as first corporate board members. Also adding credibility is the news that integrated OpenID support has been made a high priority in Firefox 3 and OpenID can be used with Windows CardSpace.

By end of 2008, I think much like the Jabber Foundation and Mozilla, OpenID will also see acceptance internationally and hopefully ecommerce websites will also enter mainstream in terms of adoption, though concerns on phishing attacks and user identity theft will continue to persist.

Checkout- http://www.spigit.com. Spigit is one of our clients. They went live early morning today. They have been working really really hard (and the website shows - great UI and great content). We have been working hard to ensure that their hard work gets all the spotlight it deserves
Spigit is a platform that provides professionals the ability to showcase new ideas and innovations and in the process build their professional network. Companies and Entrepreneurs can obtain feedback-contributions-ratings from employees, partners and customers. Spigit has a simulation engine which helps in building and refining an idea, find the right resources to contribute, create buzz, and calculate a multitude of targeted metrics to provide insight into viability and simulate the likelihood of success.

Cool, right! The simulation engine is great, gives people an opportunity to test their ideas against simulated market forces.

Digg + Second Life + Linkedin, Give your idea a spin!