The Blogo’Shawn

Today will be mashup camp in Mountain View at the Computer History Museum. I am excited to see what’s in store. Some proposed topics are of especial interest to me, in particular monetization models for mashup endeavors.  All these neat, wizzy mashups are cropping up ( I especially like the mobile 411sync collection), but I do wonder about the motivations of the contributors. Certainly, many are assembled with altruistic intentions, but what if the mashup takes off, then what does one expect the costs to be?  

 There seems to be no uniform, nor even approximately average, cost structure imposed by API providers for mashup applications that can potentially become commercial.  The stance seems to be to negotiate the fees down the line and hope for a fair situation.  So far, it’s perplexing to conceive of a business idea that progresses as 1) at the outset will probably be offered freely; 2) will gain traction and score an expanding user base; 3) at which point, one will have to negotiate with the provider companies about charges incurred by API use and hope to feasibly swing incurred costs while eking a profit. Isn’t that third step of factoring in costs supposed to procede the beginning of any bold new endeavor?? I hope we hear some concrete examples of how this step of arranging a mutually satisfactory balance manifests.

And so onwards to mashup camp, tally-ho!