Yahoo! Pipes means more mashups are coming

Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO) keeps trying to climb the mountain of services available for its web partners in the attempt to compete with Google Inc.(NASDAQ:GOOG). While Yahoo! has more global visitors than Google, it's not monetizing that viewership like Google has with its search business, much to the dismay of the YHOO investor these days. But, the Internet pioneer is making moves so as not to be left behind.

This week, Yahoo! launched Yahoo Pipes, which is a visual-development tool that lets people manipulate data feeds from Web sites to create new applications. In other words, Yahoo! is trying to get its customers to use this new tool to combine pieces of data from multiple websites in order to integrate all that information in a completely new way. Hence, better decisions from Yahoo! business customers (and individuals like bloggers) can be made. In Web 2.0 speak, this is called a "mashup".

An example of a mashup would be an application that lists real-estate listings on top of a mapping solution, so that realtors and house hunters can see both pieces of information --- at the same time --- which makes a decision much easier. Think of back in 2000 -- if you wanted to go looking for houses, you could have printed out a MapQuest map for all street locations and stapled that to a printout of "homes for sale" from a local realtor; not an elegant solution. Fast forward to 2007 and a more efficient method is becoming a reality.