What is a Mashup?

As I expect to start blogging more frequently about mashups as a web 2.0 extension to SOA, the least thing I could do is explain what a mashup actual is. Well, I am not going to explain it myself because David Berlind, executive editor at ZDNET, can do the job much better...

My three cents

To reach your customers via the cloud (it is where millions of your prospects are), start focusing on delivering your content and offerings via your own API's in stead (beside) of building websites. And allow your marketing employees and customers to build their own mashups. Just like the little Google mashup on my blog page ("My Three Cents"). This mashup got API's to complex algorithms - running in Googles secured data centers somewhere in the cloud - that calculate my incentives and manage the payments that should make me rich.

Or what about the video above that mashes up with this blog entry and has an API to a giant video server infrastructure "somewhere".

Mashups are so much more powerful and pervasive than just a website; potentially it can spread your business like a "virus" among your prospects as I illustrated with my train ticket mashup. Think of what fantastic mashups creative anonymous web-hobbyists and students could (will) build with our API's to our ticket selling-, delay state- and reroute applications. Just imagine what the potential could be for your business.