We all love MyBlogLog, right? A great little widget that tells you who has been to your site.
And Flickr? Or how about YouTube? Consider, maybe even Google’s Suite of Applications?
They are all web services. They are bits and pieces of code that allow you to mix and mash them, move them all around the web, and do whatever you damn well please.
Even Google Adsense and YPN! Web services… You don’t host those ads on your site, you install the code and it magically appears.
So I guess you can add that to the list of possibilities… making money from them.
Web Services and the Internet
I have been pretty immersed in web services for the past couple weeks. And they are fascinating. Not only does it minimize the time it takes to build a site, profit from a site, or gain readership; each of the services ads value in some way.
Take for instance – Flickr. I don’t use Flickr. None of my friends care what photos I take on a continual basis. But the application is cool. Upload your pics, install the widget into your side bar, and you immediately have a connection with the person that decided to stay longer than 3 seconds…
Fred from A VC just published an article which includes ‘The 10 things he has learned from using Flickr.’ Notable points include:
- Every web service needs to have a profile for every user
- Widgets should be used to make content available off of the service (also known as ridiculously free advertising)
- Content on the service should be bloggable
Expect to see bright, new, shiny web services in every possible sector and niche imagined. Investing, social networking, video, pics, blogs, dating, mobile, software… everything.
And, there is no better way to advertise, than to build a little web service and open it up to bloggers.
Software as a Service – The Web Service’s Big Brother
Enter Software as a Service, or SaaS for short. Software as a service is that 800 pound guerrilla that everyone from Zoho to Microsoft is clamoring to become dominant in.
Salesforce.com did it. Building a comprehensive customer relationship management application suite that is available online. No downloads. No updating. Only a monthly bill and reliable web service.
Granted, SaaS models have to look nice. They have to be easy to navigate and integrate. For the time being they need to be able to output Microsoft Word documents or whatever. But the business model is here to stay.
Quick question – Your company has 9 employees and needs 9 computers. You need CRM software and have a broadband internet connection. Pay a couple thousand dollars for software for each machine? Or sign all of your employees up to an online service for $29.99 a month?
I thought so..
The Conclusion
Web Services, Software as a Service, Application Service Providers… It’s all the same with different user interfaces. And if you are serious about building an application or a software package, going online is your best bet.
The Wall Street Journal just published an article titled, “‘Dumb Terminals’ Can Be A Smart Move.” The idea – have a host of computers accessing all of their programs and data from one central server. It increases security and lowers the cost of entry (initial investment).
My question is this.. Does it matter whether that server is in the same building or sitting on the Internet?
Related posts:
