Real Time Web

We have not touched base on Google here for a while... It has become a commodity. Really, people take it for granted. It seems like the Internet has always been indexed and searchable. And barely somebody really realizes how much of an effort it has taken. All the Web without search and indexes would not be worth even half of what it is today.

We take many things for granted. Calling somebody's mobile on the other side of the Planet for few cents. Flying close to the speed of sound with a chair at 30 thousand feet for less than a hundred dollars. Using a personal GPS and digital maps to navigate to the nearest sushi bar...

Speaking of GPSes. I love the one in my BlackBerry, together with Google maps. First, there is no maps to install - they are downloaded on demand. Second, the so - called time to fix (time needed for a GPS to acquire necessary satellite signals and calculate position) is very fast, thanks to A-GPS (Assisted GPS) functionality. A-GPS uses cell ID to deliver coarse location coordinates (usually within a radius of a mile or less) and then feeds this as a hint to the real GPS engine. Sounds little complicated, but the end result is coarse location in 1-2 seconds and precision location (accuracy below 10 meters) in 10-15 seconds. Then I go [Search Map] and enter whatever is relevant at the moment - like "Sushi" and again in a matter of a few seconds a list of nearby Japanese restaurants is displayed, then I pick one from the list, select "Get Directions" and off it guides me to the table. You better not try to enumerate all the technologies involved: GPS, A-GPS, LCD, GSM, GPRS/EDGE, 3G, Digital Maps, WWW, Internet, TCP/IP, Web Indexing, Location based search... The end result is plain and simple: a personal teleputer guiding you to the destination.

There is one catch in the above. The information you rely on is static. It may be enough to navigate to a sushi bar, as they do not change their locations that frequently. But there are other scenarios where Google and static Web are not enough. The Web is becoming more and more real time. There used to be blogs - millions of individuals contributing content to the Web. With new entries everyday. Or even several times a day. But now we have microblogs, with Twitter unquestionably leading the pack.

Twitter is not understood by many. True it may seem weird, when you look at it purely as a human - to - human communications engine. There are millions of Twitter addicts, who find it funny to post personal 140-character "statuses". But you may look at Twitter from a different angle. Leave all those individuals posting their messages. And span a business intelligence analytics engine over its entire database. Do symantic clustering and gather statistics. Suddenly you may learn a lot. And I do mean a lot. There is the already famous story of Comcast customer service monitoring Twitter streams. You have never been more in the center as a customer - no need to submit a formal complaint. Just shout and you will be heard. For service companies Twitter streams may bring more important information than their operating centers gather from OSS platforms they have in place. SAP introduces Twitter interfaces to their ERP line of business applications. Others will follow. Martin Sauter has recently found another real time application of Twitter - presentation feedback.

The Web used to be a set of linked documents. Document was a static piece of information. Now the Web is more of an expression of momentary state of our emotions. Absolutely real time, heat of the moment. I believe this poses another set of challenges to the current incumbent Web search providers. Let the ball rolling...