Simon Brocklehurst has written a nice piece on why mashup services like Yahoo! Pipes and Microsoft Popfly will never get mass acceptance. I agree that these things are never going to be super-popular services. The questions I always ask myself when I see something new being hyped are:
- What real world problem(s) is the product trying to solve?
- How much time (and usually money) does it cost to use the product to solve those problems?
- How many people want those problems solved badly enough to make the necessary investment?
Simon’s article explains fairly well how the mashup services haven’t done a good job of answering these questions. I have a similar reaction when considering services like Second Life and its predecessors, which is why I’ve never gotten past the hype on those products either.
For my part, I ask myself thse questions about the new web services we’re building every day. Will they meet the test and gain mass acceptance? I think so, but the proof is in the pudding.
Finally, as food for thought, here’s the last paragraph of Simon’s piece:
I suspect the tools that will succeed best in the “mashup” market are those that are aimed at web developers. So, if you’re looking to see who will “win” the popularity battle out of Yahoo!, Microsoft and Google, you might do worse than to consider those tools from the perspective of the web developer. If you do that, though, you’re into the world of RIA… and then you need to take Adobe, with its great tools, into account; and also possibly Sun with its forthcoming Consumer JRE and JavaFX toolset.
Do you agree with Simon? Do you think Flash/Flex/Apollo does a good job of addressing those questions? If not, why not?
Shebanator 