THE Journal

WHAT DO YOU GET WHEN YOU COMBINE TWO SEPARATE WEB APPLICATIONS? SIMPLY THE NEXT STEP IN SOCIAL NETWORKING.

"THERE WAS A TIME, not that long ago, when websites were isolated information silos," says Lynne Schrum, education professor at George Mason University in Washington, DC, "all content and no functionality. But the next generation of websites gives power to site visitors, providing a new level of customization, interaction, and participation."

Schrum is the co-author of the recently published Web 2.0: New Tools, New Schools (with Gwen Solomon, International Society for Technology in Education, 2007). She has been watching the evolution of social networking almost from the beginning. One trend she sees on the horizon for this child of Web 2.0: social networking mashups.

Named for the hip-hop practice of mixing song samples, mashups are seamless combinations of content and services from unrelated, even competing, websites. "You take Google Maps, for example," says Jason Bloomberg, researcher with IT industry analyst firm ZapThink, "and combine it with another application—say the eBay real estate listings, or Chicagocrime.org—and you've got something new," he says. Increasingly, the term covers any composite of disparate technologies.

A new generation of simple-to-use software tools is making it possible for just about anyone to combine web applications, Schrum says. The open source Gnizr project, for example, allows users to create a personalized portal for groups of friends and colleagues to store, classify, and share information, and to mash it up with location-based applications, such as Google Maps (easily the most popular mashup target).

By simplifying the development of mashups, Schrum says, these tools will allow creative developers to combine content and services from unrelated websites. "To me, that's really exciting," she says. "It's like watching a good cook combine recipes to make something new and different."