Cooperations are a key factor for any Internet company that wishes to grow, and this simple insight became an integral part in the Web2.0 world in the form of mashups.
This interesting method is another business development venue that companies should pursue when thinking about cooperations, especially when mashup “platforms” (meaning products that are pre-built in a way to integrate other product into them) are getting more and more popular. Some examples for those platforms are Facebook, Yahoo! Messenger, and many more.

The great stuff about mashups and cooperations is that it focuses both companies on “what’s in it for the users” Vs. just “what’s in it for us”.

Take this one as an example: Netvibes & Babylon.
What’s in it for them?
Babylon’s product needs to be distributed. Instead of taking yet another traditional distribution channel that costs you ads planning, making, administrating, or long, expensive hours on crafting cooperation agreements (trust me, i’ve been there…) they chose to let the users try out the product. But not in the usual means of 30 days trial but rather to let the users try key functionalities of the product in the environment they are already using.

So what’s in it for them? more users try, more users buy, less money spent on distribution channels. True, it probably required them to develop that piece of code to fit into Netvibes but it’s a relatively low-cost one time effort.
Netvibes, being mainly a content mashup platform (and a great one!), gave their users a richer experience and a feature that is not just another content but a tool that helps the users read the content. Therefore, users are more satisfied, stay longer,and start perceiving Netvibes as a content system, and not just an aggregator.