IFTTT.com, which stands of ‘if this, then that’ is a powerful tool for digital marketers. It makes marketing automation really, really simple.
I remember the days of using Yahoo! Pipes (which was super difficult to set-up) to do something as simple and tweet from an RSS feed. Then IFTTT came along and made it as easy as making a cup of tea. Yahoo! Marketers across the world rejoiced.
But IFTTT is changing its business model. It is still going to be free – which, frankly, doesn’t matter as we’d happily pay for the service – instead, it is instead going to take full ownership of the content going through the channels.
The volume of data they will have access will be more than enough to sell to data-hungry third parties.
The method they’re using to go about this hasn’t gone down all too well. Pinboard has taken the strongest stance, pointing out that it is on Pinboard to create the new API and to give up rights to the content, with no remittance. They’re not too happy:
With such uncertainty around the IFTTT product and the services that link to it, we’re keeping an eye out for competitors, such as Zapier, to make sure our recipes don’t simply break. If you’re a marketer, we suggest you follow this story closely too.