Digital Media Buzz > Mingling With Mashups: Netflix Cozies Up to Neighbors

Mingling With Mashups: Netflix Cozies Up to Neighbors

By N. Clark Judd

With increasing speed, businesses with no real product of their own are taking over the web. Ever since they started getting attention in 2006, mashups — web applications built by a third party combining the contents of two or more databases built and cared for by others — have been hailed as the future of business on the web.

It’s just, nobody is exactly sure how that’s going to happen.

Thanks to the rising frequency with which web developers offer access to their services’ data through application programming interfaces, more and more businesspeople are using mashups to stake out their territory in web commerce. And thanks to advances in authentication between websites, like the OAuth software most famously used on Twitter, developers can let their users access their data on a third-party website without allowing the third party to access any information the user doesn’t want it to have.

So it’s getting easier to share your data — and for others to use it. What does that mean for you? The answer depends largely on how much you make available, and to whom.

For Netflix, opening its API means its users can rent movies even when they aren’t on Netflix.com. Among the services to use Netflix’s API is Jinni, a contextual search engine for movies that is now in beta. Jinni’s developers add value to their site by allowing users to search for a movie they like, then — thanks to a mashup with Netflix — rent the film without leaving Jinni.com.

For Craigslist, it may mean opening itself up to competition. Quynh Pham, a Florida-based developer, launched her Reachoo.com classified ads service nine months ago. “The goal of the site is to aggregate ads from different classified websites that have their APIs exposed (like RSS or webservice) so Reachoo will have a rich content of all kind of ads to attract users,” she wrote in an e-mail. “Craigslist just happens to be the first one, we’re working on Oodle and many more to come.”

Craigslist’s ads are supposed to be the supporting cast for Reachoo’s unique product, video classifieds, which users bring over from YouTube. The front page of Pham’s website, developed with a staff of two others, is populated with video pitches for everything from yachts to bearded dragons. But in Reachoo’s current beta, a user can find an ad and contact the poster all without creating impressions for Craigslist. Pham has more features in store, she says — but she’s not going to share them yet. Her own competitors might get the drop on her if she does, she says.

Other firms are getting into the business of making it easier for a service provider to use mashups to spread its web presence. “Instead of looking for partners, you can use your API to attract potential partners and serve as a vetting mechanism. Those developers that are doing good work with your API will likely be disposed to engage with you further,” asserts Mashery, a company that sells API management services.

Swedish mobile company iDevio takes exactly the opposite tack: Its Locago Index service, launched late last year, is mobile-accessible map software designed to accept any data layer a third party decides to send in and to work on about 105 different phone models. A company spokeswoman said in an email that Locago has been downloaded 1.6 million times, and about half of those downloads have turned into users, accessing maps of traffic cameras, Flickr photos, housing, weather and others. The service offers some data layers for free and charges for others.

Tracking the growth of APIs and mashups, project by project, is Programmableweb. According to a 2006 report, John Musser’s website listed about 450 mashups as of that February.

On a recent day, that number is up to 4,130.

“Mashup is rapidly growing, of course,” says Pham, of Reachoo.com, “so it [will] probably take over most space in the web commerce world.”