More on Web 2.0: Marketplace Mashups

Cesar Brea, leader of Marketspace Advisor, did an interesting recent post on marketplace mashups, another instance of participant driven activity in Web 2.0, or whatever you want to call it. Marketspace Advisor is part of the Monitor Group. As Cesar writes:

“..,Google is moving as fast as possible to raise those entry barriers, even as it continues to work on improving its search technology. One of the ways to raise those barriers is to distribute itself widely and deeply into many other people's websites and desktops. One way it has done this is to make freely available certain tools and API's that people can use to build useful solutions of their own, whether on their own personal computers or on their servers. An increasingly well-known example is the free distribution of the Google Maps API.”

Google uses the same data at Map Quest, MSN and Yahoo but they are letting others do creative things with this data by making their APIs available and simplifying the software. Cesar mentions a service, Ning, that has appeared to make the Google Maps mashup process even easier. Cesar and his colleagues used it to produce a restaurant review beta, commenting on a few places near their office in Cambridge. Cool stuff. Cesar has encouraged me to put my restaurant picks into this format. Perhaps…

The Ning site says it is a Ning is a “free online service - or Playground - for you to build and run your own social applications. Social apps let anyone match, transact, and communicate with other people.” Here are the sample uses they list:

For any City - Create your own Classified Listings
For any Interest - Create your own Online Reviews
For any Event - Create your own Photo Sharing App
For any School - Create your own Social Network
For any Topic - Create your own Online Bookmarks
For any Mammal - Create your own Hot or Not®