Comments on: The Real Time Hype: take it or leave it?

By: Nichola Stott

Nichola Stott — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 10:34:11 +0000

@Lena

Thanks for taking the time. I will certainly be keeping an eye on the blog. I’m really looking forward to seeing how this space develops. Particulalrly following the Reuters press release story to their staff last night. I’m sure you’ve seen it but it opens up an interesting dichotomy for traditional media: http://mashable.com/2010/03/11/reuters-social-media-policy/

By: Shyam Kapur

Shyam Kapur — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 01:23:12 +0000

This is a good post. Next time you are curious about anything in the world – local or not – check out TipTop http://FeelTipTop.com which will give you the very latest organized in some magical ways. Enjoy!

By: Lena Shaw

Lena Shaw — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 17:21:15 +0000

Nichola,

Bas is correct, LeapFish is currently in negotiations with Twitter to be added as a partner. The firehose partnership will give sites like LeapFish and Topsy the extra power needed to really explore that deep rich real time web. You can follow our blog http://blog.leapfish.com for updates.

Be safe!

Lena Shaw
Manager, PR & Social Media

By: Bas van den Beld

Bas van den Beld — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 10:24:59 +0000

And let me add to that immediately that if I look NOW there are results in all engines:

http://www.oneriot.com/search?q=fire+tabernacle+street&st=web&ot=PULSE
http://search.twitter.com/search?q=fire+tabernacle+street
http://www.leapfish.com/real.aspx?q=fire%20tabernacle%20street
http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&tbo=1&q=fire+tabernacle+street&btnG=Search&meta=&aq=f&oq=

I have to point out that it works better without the ” in the search.

By: Bas van den Beld

Bas van den Beld — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 10:20:59 +0000

Hi Nichola, thats interesting! I’m off course checking out the differences right away. I think the issue here lies in the local-subject. A point which the specific real time search engines clearly need to work on. If I check Google.co.uk I’m not getting any real time results what so ever, I DO however get latest indexed results. But that could be because I’m not actually in the UK at the moment (have to work on that ).

If I go to search.twitter.com a few minutes ago I got 1 tweet back, so that didn’t work very good either. OneRiot didn’t give me any result whatsoever either.

You know which did work very good though? Bing- Twitter… so the specific page Bing designed for Twitter did give me the best results. Now there’s an interesting angle.

I think two issues are at steak here: local, which sites like Leapfish and Oneriot will need to work on and the firehose. Bing has got the deal with Twitter and with that won this ‘battle’ I think.

By: Nichola Stott

Nichola Stott — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 10:10:20 +0000

Bas,

You’re timing on the post is impeccable. There’s a huge fire this morning, just east of the City of London. Twitter broke the story to me (of course). I think that for breaking news a traditional serp cannot compete with realtime media content providers, however (though it pains me to say this) Google do get this, and if I search on G UK for “fire tabernacle street” I get a pretty decent serp, with twitter, forum and online breaking news from 1-8 and a few lame results from about 8 onwards. Conversely Leapfish isn’t doing so well for me: http://www.leapfish.com/real.aspx?q=fire%20tabernacle%20street

I get a “realtime results are slow at the moment” in the space where I suspect twitter should be. I’m not sure if this is a query load issue, or a Twitter integration issue, or some other teething trouble, but I’m willing to give specific realtime search engines the benefit of the doubt in the early stages.

Things are getting pretty interesting in the search space again. If twitter could really sort their own search out, and integrate other forms of realtime content, that would make for an awesome user experience, and there’s no reason why that couldn’t be the quickest default search option.