Mash-up

A mash-up can be seen as a composite app that is combining reusable data, presentation, and new logic. It is often seen as web solution, but this approach can be used for native app development as well. Data is everywhere. The government and various organizations have made their data publicly available through APIs. Mash-up solutions do not need to worry about the content in particular, but more about the presentation. They may occur as enterprise, data-oriented, or consumer mash-ups.

The app may gather data from multiple sources, combine and enrich them, and then present them in an app. An example of that could be as simple as producing infographics from the provided data. Another example is getting photos from Flickr and presenting them on a Google map. There are plenty of other and more sophisticated solutions that you can think of. A mash-up can be a great contribution to the development of an MVP or a Proof of Concept (PoC). Often, when it turns out that a mash-up is a profitable solution, it mostly has the function of aggregator. An example is a website comparing insurance companies.

Keep in mind that you can develop a mash-up solution relatively fast, but the monetization of it could be more difficult. Again, the biggest downside of a mash-up is the dependency on third parties. If things start to become more serious, then do not just consume their data. You need to do more than that. Avoid a potential shutdown of your business in case the company, that is delivering the data, decides to discontinue its services. You can reduce that risk if you make that company a real key partner. Although there still is a dependency, it is no longer a problem because it has become a manageable one.