Date
Aug 26
As we watch analysts debate when or what will kill Twitter- news of Facebook's acquisition of FriendFeed and Google Wave only underscore the coming real-time web. What is real-time? Currently Twitter is the biggest business solving problems around real-time web updates. When you look at twitter's pages you, and refresh at any point- you see updates immediately occurring to the page as users update their own stream. This kind of fast updating on this scale- well, it's just not being done by many- but it represents where the entire web is headed. FriendFeed has been the incubator - idea pool - for Facebook- it seemed like every real-time feature FF added- Facebook would soon copy.
Google has admitted that it has yet to solve the problems of searching real-time environments. This is because real-time constructs a structure that is in strong contrast to the elements that Google bases their current search on. Google may be the best place to find answers to a problem - or research a topic- but Twitter is now the best place to find out what is going on with that topic.
Right now we are working with aggregation tools and considering what it means for a business to operate in this real-time environment. Yes you need a twitter strategy- but you also need to be thinking about how real-time effects your own site. We just launched this new design that you are reading this article on. It incorporates a cached/hourly updated twitter feed, a sort-of-not-really real-time implementation. But as new technology becomes availible we will look to new way of using such services and incorporating them more directly into our web presence.
