Five Sites that Let You Experience the Real-Time Web Today
One of the most interesting trends on the Internet right now is a move towards a more real-time experience. We have seen a lot of discussion lately about how Twitter is leading the charge by creating a search engine for the real-time web, for example. However, there are also a good number of other services that already expose some of the promises of the real-time web. In this post, we will have a look at some of the most interesting ones.
See the Real-Time Web in Action
RSS feeds, while extremely useful, can't really provide a real-time experience as your feed reader or other RSS enabled program has to actually ping the feed at regular intervals. Instead of getting information pushed out to, you have to actively pull the information in - and, for practical reasons, most feed readers like Google Reader only poll feeds a few times an hour.
Thanks to protocols like XMPP and SUP, however, it is becoming easier for developers to pass along updates to their users almost immediately.
Notifixious
Notifixious's Superfeeder wants to bridge the world of RSS feeds and the real-time web.
Notifixious's mission is to provide (almost) real-time updates when a blog or news organization posts a new story. You simply tell Notifixious which sites to monitor and whenever it finds an update, it will send out an alert to your IM account or mobile phone.
Currently, Notifixious can only get 'real' real-time updates through XMPP from Identica, Seesmic, LiveJournal, and Sixapart's TypePad and Vox blogging communities. Notifixious also monitors public ping servers, though these can be unreliable at times.
FriendFeed Real-Time
We are big fans of FriendFeed here at ReadWriteWeb (you can find - and join - our FF room here). One of the neatest features of FriendFeed is its ability to show you a real-time stream of your friend's updates. You can actually put those real-time updates into a browser sidebar if you use Firefox. Of course, this stream, like a lot of real-time applications, can often move faster than you can read if you follow a lot of FriendFeed users.
Monitter
The search function that Twitter acquired from Summize is probably the most commonly used real-time search engine on the Internet right now. Sadly, the results page doesn't automatically update as new updates come in.
A service that does just that is Monitter (our review). Monitter lets you simultaneously search for three keywords and it automatically updates whenever a new post with the keyword appears.
The Real-Time Web at Work: Google Docs, Zoho, MindMeister
Of course, the real-time web isn't just about consuming information - Google Docs, Zoho, MindMeister and many others allow you to collaborate and edit documents with your colleagues in real-time. As you make changes to the document, those changes will immediately be reflected on your fellow users' screens as well.
Starting Next Week: Your Facebook Homepage
You can't actually use this today, but earlier this week, Facebook announced that it will enable real-time updates of its users' news feeds next week. Currently, Facebook only updates the feed a few times per hour. Once this new version of the news feed goes live, it will probably be one of the largest implementations of real-time status updates on the Internet.
CC-licensed logo image used courtesy of Flickr user RBerteig
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Real-time interaction is becoming a necessity on the ever-more dynamic Web.
Frederic, you bring up a fascinating point: is the real time web the future? Are we going to be informed the moment an event happens and someone is present to witness it? Will we become the eyes, ears and thoughts of every other net citizen?
Very Borg-esque...
Being in the news business, I'm very much in favor of the Real-Time Web from a publisher's perspective. But I also believe that this service - which will be an option, not replacing the current historical method of getting data online - isn't the type of thing the general population would proactively ask for. They'll get it only by using it and then wondering how they ever lived without it.
More of my thoughts on this topic: http://jasonsalas.com/2009/03/curious-case-of-real-time-web.html
when search database result is build by social networks "real time result is what need to build so that another time will be use to look up on Google search to verify the searching result that is resulted by this search engine "by people"what do you think people ,do you agree with me?
I have a bad feeling about the new facebook homepage...
Don't forget twitterfall.com
i hate when i go to click through on something on my Facebook live feed (like, news about a friend's new baby), but right before i actually click, the feed updates pushing the rest of the content down on the page. so i end up clicking on something other than what i had aimed for (like the notice that someone found an egg on someone else's page. oh whoopee.)
Frederic, maybe you could have mentioned Twitscoop ?
You even covered us here: http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/twitscoop_real_time_twitter_tag_cloud.php
I met a few days ago a passionate entrepreneur who is behind Storytlr (http://storytlr.com/). It's a web 2.0 media aggregator using XMPP. Definitively worth a look.
Link to Storytlr
Sorry for the link.
A couple points:
It seems like the term "real-time web" needs some definition. There is turn-based data like the current implementation of Twitter/Summize where the stream is gated until the user initiates a refresh.
Then there is the truly live feed that sites like Twistori deliver where the stream updates as soon as the next message is posted.
Related: Truly real-time updating will be too overwhelming in most cases, especially for a vast socialnet as high-volume as Twitter. There's just too much data to keep up with. While it can be entertaining, a useful digest must have some sort of gating that the user can control, otherwise too much valuable data flows past before it can be acknowledged.
This leads to the need for better filters. Maybe a live feed can be of value if it effectively sorts out the valuable bits and caches them into a container that the user can browse at will.
Real-time is cool and fascinating but is not especially valuable without being able to draw out more persistent data, trends, and sentiment.
The visiting companies by name in real-time on your website and the pages they are viewing.
Frederic,
It all is getting faster and faster, I guess the question becomes, do we jump on it just because it's there, it's really cool, and that we can. Or do we pick and choose based on our needs.
We all know how addicting Twitter can be, and perhaps leading us to consume more time communicating.
Just a thought. We each must determine where we fit into this real time communication.
John
Then there is the truly live feed that sites like Twistori deliver where the stream updates as soon as the next message is posted.
Here's a site using real time communications in the form of a real time blog.
http://sms.pangolin.com/rtblog/
Don
With certain topics/subjects I like to see what is happening right now, especially when I am researching a particular market place or spending time in social media sites. But with other searches/topics I don't really want to see whats happening in real time.