Real Takes on Real-Time Search

Image by Evan Hamilton via Flickr

Okay, not the best blog post title, but it was a big day, being featured in both The Wall Street Journal and USA Today on the same topic: real-time search. For newcomers to the field, it's the very hot field where Google, Microsoft&39;s Bing, and a range of startups are trying to best index all of the rapidly updated statuses across Facebook, Twitter, and other social media sites.

The WSJ&39;s Jessica Vascellaro reported on real-time search in the context of a new Yahoo deal with One Riot and included my take at the end (note: subscription required to read the whole story):

David Berkowitz, senior director of emerging media and innovation at
digital marketing agency 360i, said he believes the value of real-time
search data for businesses is greater than the appeal of data to
advertisers. He predicts that one of the biggest uses of "real-time
search engines" that produce results based on what&39;s popular on the Web
right now, will be for queries related to breaking news. But reaching
users searching for news is far less interesting to advertisers than
reaching searchers who are looking to buy something, he said.

Jon Swartz in USA Today took a broader approach on the subject, in what was a front page story in their Money section. I also got to close out the article:

The new services are confident that the market can support them. Search
"is a huge driver of online traffic, shopping, content discovery," says
David Berkowitz, senior director of emerging media and innovation at digital-marketing agency 360i.

The topic is still fairly new as far as the media and public consciousness goes (even if technologists and academics have followed it for longer), and I had fun addressing it recently at an OMMA panel, so I&39;m sure I&39;ll have more to say about it, and I definitely have a lot more to learn.