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23 Jul 2006
(Re-?)defining mashing
For the MicroLearning conference I prepared a talk about mashing. The definition at set by WikiPedia A mashup is a website or web application that uses content from more than one source to create a completely new service.
does fit reasonably well. I however miss any reference to MicroContent in the Wikipedia article, which I find essential, also in the context of Web 2.0.
When working on the proceedings paper I realised that I would rather have a stricter definition for mashing. At the moment I describe mashing as combining individual MicroContent Items from multiple sources using set parameters
. In the definition there are three main parts: MicroContent, Sources and Parameters. Why the MicroContent is there should be clear. It is the basis of syndication, API's, re-use, etc. I am not sure whether the Sources part is necessary, it would exclude all mash-ups that I create myself from my own content. However it surely makes things more interesting. For me however the most interesting part of mashing is the Parameters part of the definition. That is about how we can combine MicroContent Items. It is about how MicroContent hangs together. And how MicroContent hangs together depends on rules, personal choices and the structure of MicroContent itself.
A consequence of the definition is that a Google Map service usually is not a mash-up. As the maps themselves are not MicroContent one can not really talk about a mash-up. Only the individual points on the map are MicroContent Items. These Items can come from multiple sources and why they appear on a map might follow some parameters, so usually a Google Map might be a mashup. But only thanks to the points on the map.
A map acts as a canvas to put MicroContent Items on, just like a web-page acts as a canvas, or a grid in Flickr, or a table of links in Del.icio.us, the table in iTunes, etc.