Idea generation #56: The importance of switch boards

As the social web evolves, the ability to move data around is going to gain in importance. Recently, I have noticed the emergence of such services. I called them switch-board services. They essentially act as switch boards to move your data around different web services. More importantly, they are not aggreators or destination sites. They focused on distribution.

TwiiterBoard focuses on integrating your Tweets to other services. Its first application is saving links in your tweets to your Del.icio.us account. I don't use Twitter so I cannot comment on its usefulness.

Switchabit is another such switch board service. I am currently using it to take my blog content and post it to Facebook and Tumblr. The service is still young. There are features i wish it has such as for my facebook friends being able to click directly to my blog. The tumblr integration also needs some work.

I think these services will be important but we need to create test cases that take them beyond the domain of 'geeks'. We need to imagine how this will impact other industries before we can harzard a guess of the degree of importance of allowing data to flow.

A simple case is to integrate your data with ecommerce services. For example, I can route my travel pictures in Facebook to a travel site, which then intelligently (through tags or image recognition) know what places I have been and recommend other travel locations. Another example, I can route my blog content to Amazon, which then recommends the relevant books for me.

Another application is in marketing. Tubemogul help video makers post their content to various video sharing sites. Switch board services take this idea further by letting you post your content from any location to other locations. If you are a photographer, owner of blog shops, video maker, musician, designer, tutor, financial advisor et al, this means you can distribute your products, services or content widely through the switchboard services, all without having to upload to another site (like what tubemogul is doing).

I am excited by switchbaord services because they are going to shape how we distribute things online. This is an area that that can bring big financial opportunities to whoever can get it right.

Related:
Startup Idea #90: Feeds based advertising
Startup idea #46: News feed opportunities
Startup idea #87: Feeds as the next search

Posted in: advertising,idea generation