Mashups - March 2006

Taking a little of this and a little of that, new websites are changing the ways we find and use information online.

Surely, we've all tried to search for a destination online via Mapquest or Google Maps. Whether you're showing a home to a potential client or simply trying to find directions to the nearest movie theater, the Internet is a great place to quickly look up addresses, directions, maps, and more. Yet what if all of these items were seamlessly combined and you only had to go to one website for an aerial view map of a location, an address, and real estate listings? Sound too good to be true? Well, it's not. The technology of website mashups makes surfing the web for information more enjoyable and is less time-consuming for the end user.

What Is A Mashup?

A mashup is a website that combines content from various other websites into one convenient, easy-to-use portal. Originally named after hip-hop music consisting of two or more songs put together, mashups are quickly gaining popularity on the Internet because of their convenience.

Content for mashups is typically gathered via third party sources via public interfaces (APIs), yet RSS and JavaScript are sources as well. In layman's terms, programmers combine and remix data and services of unrelated, sometimes competing websites, and package the information into new uses.

Mashup sites such as Housingmaps.com provide real estate classifieds from Craigslist.org presented as clickable push pins on interactive Google Maps, allowing the user to see on a map the exact locations of homes for sale and apartments for rent. The power of Google Maps has been combined with the Craigslist ads so that the reader can see information from both sites at the same time, without having to toggle back and forth between the two original websites.

Another example of a mashup is Dealmine.com, which lets the user shop for discounted products and services from a wide range of websites. The bottom line is that you save time and money; instead of visiting several sites to find the best deal on argyle socks or color printer ink, you can search one site to find and compare offerings from multiple websites.

How Does It Work?

Long gone are the days of the hourglass turning and turning on your PC monitor as you wait for a page to load. Web mashups run seamlessly thanks to a technology known as AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript And XML). It involves the usage of several existing technologies such as XHTML, JavaScript, Cascading Style Sheets, XML, XSLT, the Document Object Model, and the XMLHttpRequest object. Don't let this list of technology acronyms intimidate you. All you need to worry about is the convenience that this combination of technologies imparts.

Potential Uses & Impacts on the Real Estate Industry

Mashups are another of the many new phenomena on the Web. They're largely experimental, created by people trying to see how information can be recombined and presented in new ways. Some mashups are very useful and well-designed, while others are clearly just experiments. But they've quickly become a very popular and growing trend, with 2 or 3 new mashups appearing each day, according to Mashup Feed, a directory of mashup sites.

Information used in mashup sites can come from just about anywhere. Google Maps is by far the most popular component of mashups. Amazon, Yahoo! Maps, and photo-sharing site Flickr are also a source for many of the sites. But in general, content from sites that either encourage reuse of their information or that provide noncopyrighted information are considered fair game, while sites that contain proprietary or copyrighted data (such as MLS listings) usually are not components of a mashup website. Conflicts have arisen between some mashup sites and the websites they use as their sources when copyrights have been ignored, information is used in unintended ways, or too much attention is given to a competitor. But many websites that have been used by mashups see the repackaged information as a form of marketing and research, making their name and work available to a wider audience.

Part of what makes mashups such an interesting trend is that they are being driven by the masses. They're relatively simple to create, so that any amateur programmer can build one. As more Web-based organizations allow their content and services to be repackaged in this way, it gives more power to the people actually using the information, letting them present the content in new and different ways.

To help avoid conflicts and competition with their content sources, most mashups don't generate any profits beyond running a few Google ads or collecting fees for sending users to e-commerce sites, so the future of mashups as a business model is murky. However, a few major corporations have begun experimenting with mashups of their own in so-called "mapvertising" campaigns, which combine Google Maps or Google Earth with interactive games, contests, and other promotions.

Where exactly the mashup trend is headed is unclear, but for now it's generating some fun, fast and convenient new ways to surf the Web for information.

Potential Impacts on REALTORS® and the Real Estate Industry

Mashups can be a great way to add value to a real estate professional's customer service arsenal. Besides HousingMaps.com, there are several dozen real estate- and neighborhood-themed mashups available that can provide clients with tools to search for homes more easily and find the ideal neighborhood for their families or businesses. Communitywalk.com, for example, provides clients with information about the community where they're considering a home purchase. Its creator, whose mother is a real estate agent, wanted to make a site that describes the communities associated with listings in order to make the home buying process easier (and also to make the home selling process easier for his mom!). It provides the end user with maps of a community's restaurants, retailers, hotels, schools, businesses, and more. Another site, Familywatchdog.us, can be help clients assess the safety of their children in a potential neighborhood. Simply type in a residential address and a push-pin map is provided of sex offenders in the area. Click on a push pin and receive a photo of the offender, as well as his/her home address, and the crime committed. Other mashups plot the locations of gyms and exercise studios, properties being auctioned on eBay, wineries, recent crimes in a given area, upcoming sports and cultural events, and more.

Before recommending a mashup website or using information from one, it's important to become familiar with the site, its coverage, and its original sources. Content could be inaccurate or outdated, and some cities and neighborhoods might be covered in detail while others have only spotty information. As with any source online or off, it's essential to make sure the mashup site you're interested in provides relevant and accurate information.

As mashups become more widespread and easier to create, REALTORS®, firms, and associations might consider offering mashups of their own as promotional tools and as a service to clients. An easy choice would be a personalized virtual tour of a community, using Google Maps and photos posted on Flickr, or possibly an interactive map showing the location of homes recently sold by an agent or firm.

- J. Hazen

NAR's Web Wizard Report - No. 77 (March 2006)

For Further Reading

Programmableweb Mashup Center - Directory of mashups to search or browse by topic (including real estate)

Mashup (web application hybrid), (Wikipedia)

Mix, Match, And Mutate: "Mash-ups" -- homespun combinations of mainstream services -- are altering the Net, (Business Week, July 25, 2005)

Smoother Surfing: A grab bag of programs called Ajax could threaten the dominance of Microsoft and desktop software, (Newsweek, Jan. 30, 2006)

It's all in the mix: What do you get if you combine, say, the tagging system from one site with the RSS feed of another? A software mashup, one of the hits of Web 2.0, reports Jack Schofield , (The Guardian, Feb. 2, 2006)

Questions or Comments?

Send an e-mail to NAR's Web Wizards.