Influx

The “Mash-Up” as a term has been around for a few years, after starting its life as descriptor of a type of music where two opposing styles were mashed together in creative and surprising ways. The more diverse the opposing sources, the more interesting the mash-up. Now the trend has gone from cool to mass and there are hundreds of radio stations across the country with “mash-up hours” on Friday and Saturday nights.

In business, the scene is a little different and at the moment it refers to individual’s creative application using various API (open programming codes). A number of companies, including, Amazon, Flickr, Google and Yahoo are opening up their APIs and letting people play. Now thanks to sites like this, we can look at the various different and intriguing applications that people have developed.

Some examples include:

Garbage Scout – a Google maps mash-up that allows you to find interesting garbage in NYC

Flappr – a different way to search through all the zillions of photos at Flickr

Motion Mall – a site that lets you create your own banner for Amazon tool

Delancey – an elegant way to display your delicious links

Yahoo News Tag Soup – Shows the prominent news stories of the day in a tag cloud

Although in the case of programming the meaning of mash up has been subverted, in this world it often means playing with some code and creating a different version out of it, sometimes by applying other elements. For an excellent explanation of the technology and some great UK examples, The Guardian has a just published a great piece on this.

What’s more interesting is the principle. Think of mash-ups in a context beyond programming, give away elements of your brand, let people play with them and give them back as a new and different interpretations.

So a new model for future business could be the mash-up between the creativity of the consumer or individuals and the expertise of the corporation.

If your brave enough, open the floodgates and a million new ideas will emerge.