What do Rachel Rosmarin and myself have in common? Well, she writes for industry-leading Forbes Magazine and I write/manage GISuser… big deal eh? [just kiddin around!]
Ok.. but really, something we do have in common is that we were both in attendance at Where 2.0 recently and looks like we both still have a big ? on where the money will be found in the mashup space. There’s no doubt that there’s money to be had, however, companies still haven’t ironed out their business models and the most common model being sought after in the mashup space to date is advertising revenues.
Keep in mind though, with players like Autodesk open sourcing apps like Mapguide it creates a plethora of opportunities for developers and with commercial licensing for APIs from Google and Yahoo! once again we have increased opportunities for collecting some green. In the article at Forbes, Rosmarin spends some time discussing things she saw and people she spoke with, like Di-Ann Eisnor, chief executive of Platial – Platial got loads of airtime at the event for their popular social networking application/mashup – think Panoramio or Frappr on steroids! Platial packs more functionality (and fun) than most other similar hacks in the same space although after listening to the CEO the company is still unclear as to what their business model is/will be – I even heard Eisnor state that she hopes that the company will still be around in this space next year! Clearly they aren’t going anywhere, mostly since they are Angel funded, giving them an advantage most mashers don’t have… they have cash to burn while a business model surfaces.
If you haven’t tried Platial yet be sure to check it out (www.platial.com). The Forbes piece is an interesting, short read but there’s no doubt with Mashups and Geospatial solution providers like Autodesk, Microsoft, and Vexcel getting print in Forbes it’s clear that Geospatial is going mainstream and the opportunities are there. See the article Maps. Mash-Ups. Money? HERE – For fun, you can also check out this test drive at Platial that I threw together in about 3 minutes… pretty cool!
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Anything Geospatial: Tracking developments affecting GIS, geospatial technologies, location-based services, mapping, google earth and google maps. Published by the creator and editor of GISuser.com & LBSzone.com
