ReadWriteWeb

Earlier this week Myspace announced a partnership with Google to deliver real-time status updates to the search experience. As of today, the company is furthering its real-time efforts by announcing the public release of the real-time stream, status and mood commenting, open search and photo upload APIs.

"Real-time" - as in the "real-time web" - has certainly become the buzzword du jour. It's even possible that the move of web services to support a real-time, immediate flow of information is what will ultimately define the next version of the web...if you're someone who likes to attach version numbers to something that's in as much constant change as today's Internet, that is. Still, it's easy to see the benefits of real-time in action, especially when it comes to disseminating news...as was apparent when the immediacy of Twitter trumped CNN's coverage of the Iranian elections and subsequent riots.

Yet exactly how a company should integrate "real-time" into their service is something that's not always easy to grasp. It's clear that Facebook, for one, is still trying to figure it out.

Facebook today announced a major update to its homepages that will go live next Wednesday. The new homepages will put the news feed front and center and have both a filtering feature as well as a sidebar that highlights the most popular topics and links that are currently being discussed by your friends. The news feed is now also updated in real-time, while the old feed ran on a schedule and only updated a few times per hour.

Imagine TweetDeck as an online application. Now imagine that you could use its paneled dashboard interface to keep tabs on your other online identities, too. With PeopleBrowsr, you can. This new application, currently in alpha, lets you update your networks, follow your friends, organize your favorites, and search for content across networks that include Twitter, flickr, YouTube, LinkedIn, Digg, Seesmic, identi.ca, Photobucket, upcoming, and FriendFeed.