What can IFTTT do with $30 million?

I have been following IFTTT, (IF This Then That) since 2010. Why? Because it’s a great concept: a way of connecting different web applications, a kind of middleware to create so-called recipes through conditional statements.

A lot of people I know use IFTT to automate events; for example, when they publish something on a social network it is automatically published on others. But it has other uses, which are growing quickly as the internet of things spreads, and it becomes easier than ever to interconnect things through conditional rules, one example of which is the possibility of linking the virtual with the physical, such as the investor whose Philips Hue office light bulbs glow green when the worth of his portfolio rises by more than 10%, or shine red when his ventures fall by more than 10%

But beyond being a simple manager of conditional rules and trying to connect with every API around to be able to use more social networks, the really interesting thing about IFTTT is that it is now sufficiently big enough for the rules of the game to have changed, making it of interest to the social networks themselves. The value that users see in such a tool can be increased if said tool puts some development effort into integrating with other devices or tools through IFTTT, and which is encouraging more and more developers to create their own IFTTT channels offering these kinds of uses or to receive ideas from other users. IFTTT can be used to develop new recipes that can be shared with the community if you think they might be of interest to others, a process that is creating a new ecosystem of ideas and possibilities. It is more than likely that a glance over an IFTTT channels page will, without too much effort, allow you to get a lot more out of the tools you use.

Yesterday, IFTTT announced a $30 million investment by Northwest Venture Partners aimed at exploring the many possibilities offered by the development of the internet of things. A $30 million investment in the context of today’s multi-billion dollar deals may not sound like much, but we are talking here about a very simple application, which has been carefully and frugally developed at a cost of $9 million, and that has not attracted much attention so far. In this context, $30 million provides the means to do a great deal in the future, particularly if the idea is to become a showcase for platform strategies…

(En español, aquí)