ReadWriteWeb

Most platforms gain traction through a killer app. In the second generation of real time, that killer app was market data for financial traders. What will it be in the third generation?

Today, the real-time Web is associated with social networking status updates via services such as Twitter and Facebook. But whether this will be the killer app for this generation is not clear. As we enter a period of "social update exhaustion" (as in, "I really do not care what you had for breakfast"), the real-time Web may evolve into things that we really need to make a living or to get essential stuff done. The killer app matters, because the winner at the platform layer will be the company that hosts it.

Hype cycles, like all cycles, are getting shorter. People want to be the first to say, "You heard it here first, folks: this or that hot thing you hear about all the time is a bunch of hot air."

We love to debunk myths and prick bubbles as much as the next set of pundits, but we think the real-time Web is for real. Financial traders have lived in a real-time world for a while, but only within the confines of the trading floor. When they left work, they entered a batch world. Most other people work in a batch world. That is changing. We are all entering the real-time world of the trader. Some of us are getting there faster, but we are all heading there. And relax, there is an "Off" button!