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Real time search was one of last year's most-discussed tech trends and one of the leaders of that conversation was real-time social media search engine Collecta. Collecta worked directly with publishers to build an index of trusted multi-media content that it streamed live on its website and through its Application Programming Interface (API) on other sites. Twitter, WordPress and Flickr were three of its biggest sources.

Today Collecta.com gave up the ghost and is now a parked domain. The company made a strong go of it and but apparently despite having a unique and smart product, talent, money and attention - it just wasn't enough.

Digg just announced the availability of a new streaming real-time Application Programming Interface (API) for all submissions, Diggs and comments on the site. Modeled after the Twitter Streaming API, Digg elected to use Tornado, the real-time framework built by FriendFeed and open sourced by Facebook, and Redis to power the API.

Will developers go for it? Though Digg's currency appears to be dropping fast, real-time streaming data from millions (?) of social media users, concerning links to content from all around the Web, has got to hold some interest for programatic analysis, UI innovation and publishing industry analytics. The flow of data coming through the API seems a little anemic, though. We spoke with some of the Web's leading data developers who see today's announcement in very different ways.

Real-time search is very different from regular search. After studying about 1 million queries on real-time search engine Collecta, researchers at Pennsylvania State University came to the conclusion that - relative to regular search - users of real-time search engines tend to search less for adult topics and focus more on technology, entertainment and politics. This, according to the researchers, reflects "both the temporal nature of the queries and, perhaps, an early adopter user base."

Over 97% of all searches on real-time search engine and infrastructure provider OneRiot are now driven by the company's partners who use OneRiot's API to serve real-time search results. Today, OneRiot is announcing the next version of its API, which - among other things - gives content owners the ability to create real-time search engines for their domains and sites. The new API will also allow developers to integrate OneRiot's real-time ads with the search results. OneRiot is also introducing a new ad format for Twitter apps. These ads are limited to 140 characters and include shortened URLs.

Real-Time search engine OneRiot just announced that its advertising network RiotWise is now open to all developers. RiotWise is OneRiot's attempt to monetize real-time streams by focusing on trending topics and giving advertisers the opportunity to highlight their own content in these streams or through regular banner ads. The private beta of RiotWise began in October 2009 and the company has steadily opened up the service to more developers. Starting today, any developer who wants to implement OneRiot in an app can do so.

Taptu, a mobile search engine that specializes in indexing mobile-friendly websites, just launched a new version of its iPhone app. The new app now includes real-time search results, which are powered by OneRiot. In addition to including these real-time search results, Taptu also worked hard on improving the speed of the app and on providing more relevant search results. Taptu offers apps for the iPhone, iPod touch (iTunes link) and Android, as well as a mobile optimized website.

OneRiot, one of the leading real-time search engines, just announced the launch of a new advertising product for real-time apps. RiotWise Trending Ads will give OneRiot's partners a feed of ads related to currently trending topics on the Web. These ads can, for example, be integrated in a user's stream of updates in Twitter apps or displayed as regular mobile ad units. Digsby, for example, plans to place these ads directly in its users' streams, but because the units are delivered as a feed through OneRiot's API, developers are free to use them in whatever way they see fit.

Having just launched a new real-time mobile search engine in conjunction with OneRiot only weeks ago, mobile search company Taptu is now expanding their revamped service to the Android platform. Today, they're launching a new application designed specifically for Android phones running version 1.5 and above. Like their brand-new mobile website, Taptu for Android includes real-time search results thanks to OneRiot integration. It also offers a touchscreen interface for viewing the results without having to pinch, resize, or refocus the screen.

Most text excerpts that appear on search results pages aren't very useful. Imagine if instead your search engine showed a list of clear sentences summarizing the contents of each link on that search result page. That's what a new service called Factery Labs aims to provide for any service that utilizes the API it's launching today.

You give Factery a list of links and a keyword and it will build an index of all the facts asserted in those links about your topic of interest, delivered in XML or JSON format. The service can run on top of a search engine but could also be used in any number of other ways. I've been feeling unsatisfied with other search engines all day since seeing a Factery demo Monday morning.

Specialized mobile search engine Taptu and real-time search service OneRiot have teamed up to launch a new real-time search engine for mobile. With the touch-friendly interface provided by Taptu, you can now perform searches from your mobile phone and receive real-time results from sites like Twitter and Digg. In addition, you can browse through the trending topics to see what recent events are currently being buzzed about.