January 15th, 2006
Mapping and Google Maps continue to dominate the mashup scene
A new mashups directory by John Musser called Mashup Feed features 325 mashups currently, a figure which is growing at a rate of 2.63 new mashups per day. There are currently 142 APIs documented on the site too. But what’s most striking is that the mashups are still predominantly mapping ones. Mapping mashups make up 70% of the total! Altogether, 3 of the top 4 APIs are mapping APIs.
Also, 55% of the 325 mashups listed use the Google Maps API, proving that Google is still the dominant API provider.
Below are two tables from Mashup Feed, showing the current trends.
Table 1: Top 10 APIs according to how many times they’ve been used in a mashup
| APIs | API Mashups |
| GoogleMaps | 179 |
| Amazon | 31 |
| YahooMaps | 30 |
| VirtualEarth | 28 |
| Flickr | 27 |
| del.icio.us | 18 |
| eBay | 15 |
| Yahoo | 10 |
| MSNMessenger | 10 |
| 9 |
Table 2: Top 10 tags used to describe the mashups
| Tags | Tag Count |
| mapping | 228 |
| search | 36 |
| shopping | 29 |
| photo | 28 |
| transit | 25 |
| realestate | 20 |
| nyc | 19 |
| news | 19 |
| sports | 17 |
| travel | 14 |
I wonder how long before we begin to see more non-mapping mashups - for example search, shopping, news. I suspect there are many mashup niches waiting to be filled in 2006.
