[mashups] Lots of coal, but the engine is full.

Read/WriteWeb points out that mapping continues to be the dominate API used for mashups, and wonders if mashups have lost their luster:

There are few surprises in this information. Google Maps is by far the most popular API, with 50% of mashups using it. Flickr and Amazon are next with 11% and 8% respectively. Also, it’s notable that 5% of mashups are using YouTube - which probably corresponds to the recent rise of video aggregators like Vidmeter. Finally, 4% and total of 74 mashups use the del.icio.us API.
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What can we derive from this analysis? It appears that mashups are certainly cool, but they are not burgeoning. The growth has been steady, but not really explosive. This begs the question: why?

This isn’t really that surprising if you think about it. Let’s start by thinking about what a mashup is. Wikipedia kindly defines it as an application that combines content from multiple sources into an integrated experience. Fair enough, and actually I find this definition to be more insightful than the one that I was thinking of. Browsing the list of mashups at Programmable Web, for example, seems to suggest that maps are a key component of mashups. Is this just because Google Maps et al. are so cool, likable, or useful? They arguably are those things but when you delve more extensively into the API list a different picture emerges.

Most of the APIs are data sources. Del.icio.us is a data source for bookmarks. Technorati is a data source for blog data. Amazon has a data source for product information. There are a lot of data sources. There are also a lot of places this data is used. Nearly every blog you find has a del.icio.us or flickr widget. Are these mashups? according the Wikian definition they combine content from multiple sources (del.icio.us + flickr + posts). People don’t often think of these kinds of things as mashups. An awful lot of web applications and new web startups seem to possess mashup like qualities. While they may have their own core data they often integrate or offer sharing with popular web services and APIs. They integrate information from youtube, flickr and others. They may also avoid the mashup moniker because they are expected to bring their own data set to the table. A lot of the ‘feel’ of a mashup is that is just bringing together things that already exist. The more it has its own features, data, users, etc. the less it ‘feels’ like a mashup.

That fifty percent that are dominated by mapping APIs is a pretty big number. The thing is, Google Maps are more than just a data source. They are a visualization platform. If you were to make a mashup you might start with some data, or something you want to show or look at. What do you do with it? Do you make a blog widget? Maybe. Do you stick it on a GoogleMap? Sure, why not. Do you make your own cool new web applications and visualization components to highlight the relationships between the data and create cool interaction opportunities. Hmm. Maybe not.

Google Maps (and its mapping brethren) remains the most generally useful, accessible, open, and viral visualization platform for creating mashups. There aren’t an awful lot of other places to stick data and have it look like anything other than just another web app. When it goes on a blog we call it a widget instead. You could imagine tomorrow if google created an open tree map visualization platform that was as accessible as its mapping API all of a sudden there would be a ton of tree map mashup visualizations floating around.

The argument here is that:
We need more open / sharable / viral visualization platforms that are both general enough to be applicable and accessible enough to be used.

Is this what mashups will be - a playground for enthusiasts? I believe that the answer is ‘yes’. Even though services like Yahoo! Pipes, Teqlo and Dapper are working to simplify the process of creating mashups, it will likely remain a fairly technical exercise done by enthusiasts.

Obviously it helps that Google is a big company and can support its software pretty well, in both technology and marketing. Read/WriteWeb concludes that mashups will remain the domain of technology and software enthusiasts. I don’t disagree, but suggest that in the middle of the mashup lifecycle we’ve seen so far (starting with the release of the Google Map API) there were an awful lot of people without any real programming experience excited about being able to create a meaningful interactive visualizations of some information. I believe that if more visualization platforms followed we would see continued growth in that demographic as more casual users were capable of visualizing information in a worthwhile way. The drive toward available data APIs and sharing information is important, but casual users need clear outlets for using that information.