This is a guest post by Evan Britton, founder of Sency.
There is a new way to search the web, and boatloads of users who have experienced the real time web have been impressed with the results. Traditional search engines rank sites based on relevancy. Because of this, the results don’t change a lot; a search today will reveal most of the same sites and information that were there last month. However, with companies like Twitter and Facebook having millions of users continue to post content and status updates – there is now real time content on the web which updates each second. Search engines and startups have leveraged this information to offer internet users instant access to what is happening right now.
So, when breaking news happens, a real time search will instantly give you the public’s thoughts, opinions, and experiences in relation to the breaking news. A search on Google news would give you links to articles written by people in the media, a real time search will allow you to sift through all internet users comments and thoughts. There have been several startups which have launched search engines and tools to try and offer users a good experience in searching and navigating through the real time web:
Here is a list of three startups along with a quick overview of what makes each of them stand out:
1) Topsy – What makes Topsy’s real time search engine stand out is that it is focused on real time links as opposed to real time content. So, when you perform a search at Topsy, instead of seeing what people are talking about on the real time web, you are going to see what the most popular and prominent links are being shared on the real time web. You can ever sort to see the most shared links over the past hour, day, week, or month.
2) OneRiot – Rumors have been swirling all over the web in regards to a partnership Yahoo is discussing with OneRiot. OneRiot offers users a real time search engine which can be sorted based on web results and video results. OneRiot also announced in early October that it will be rolling out a platform for advertisers to pay for listings to featured content on their results pages. While most real time web companies have been focused on technology and traffic, OneRiot seems to be an early leader in the monetization of the real time web.
3) Sency* – Sency has built a free feed for websites and blogs (http://sency.com/feed.php). The feed brings in real time content which updates automatically on the site or blog it is published on. The site and blog owners are able to select which keyword they want the feed to scroll for. So, a blog about sports, can for example, have automatically updating real time content anytime someone uses the word baseball or football shows up on the real time web
*this article was written by Evan Britton, founder of Sency.
(photo by akk_rus @ Flickr CC)
Evan Britton, is an internet marketing veteran. In 2009, he launched Sency in an effort to make an impact on the real time web.