Interactive Marketing Blog

Sometime back, two new entrants joined the race for real-time search derby competition – CrowdEye and Collecta including previous contenders like Topsy, OneRiot, Tweetmeme and Scoopler, not to mention Twitter Search and Friendfeed Search (though not so popular amongst the ordinary searchers). Then there’s Facebook testing an upgraded internal real-time search and Google too has decided to get into this segment sometime soon.

So all these surely hints at one thing- the real-time search space is really getting hotter day by day, thanks to Twitter which very much led the pack by guiding and making users want more of this real-time thing.

But while I was casually browsing through these real-time terrain, it made me wonder if at all these newbies stand any chance against the goliaths of the derby like Google, Facebook and of course twitter. Though Facebook is slightly different altogether as it gives more inward, closed loop real-time search results but surely do they stand any chance against the mighty Google or Twitter (in terms of their usage)?

Now if we scrutinize the big shots against these small time upstarts, we see a huge yet subtle discomfort – discomfort of being “yet another joining the legion” syndrome. I, for example, am comfortable using the web to the extent of primary 3 kind of tasks needs which I believe is the case for most of the users, even casual ones – Data/Links, Connect and Information. And if we consider the bandwagon of static and real-time search, then Google, Facebook and Twitter suffices my thirst for all these 3 needs that any other users might have.

So why still use these newbie services? Though offhand it shows that these services are slightly different from other similar services but at the end of the day what would matter most is interconnectivity – for example, we use twitter and search via twitter search or Use google’s services and rely on Google for other search (even real-time search) related queries, use Facebook to connect with my friends and harness the connectivity theorem to extract large pool of closed system information.

Though one case can be that as they evolve and able to iterate quickly, they will find their niche but usability, context and of course relevancy is of prime concern since neo-web gives users a heck lot of options for users to shift and stick.

Saying all that, I love this space which is evident from the countless posts on real-time web and its possibilities. So would wait for more to evolve which can give a definite shape to the next webolution.