WTF Is The Value of Real-time Search?
DanielBMarkham: The key question really is: Is anything interesting happening fast enough that I want to see it right now?Analytical asshole man says no -- that's what newspapers and google are for: the great majority of stuff I care about happened either in the far past (like more than a day ago) or needs to be edited, filtered, and ranked by an agrregation site (like this)But social psychologist man says yes -- people want to chat real-time, not over a period of minutes even. Rumors get started, grow or die, in a matter of hours. For some stupid human reason people are still tweeting away happily about the meal they ate at McDonalds this morning.And that's not even mentioning the phenomenon of the tens of millions of bloggers or small etailers who live and die on what's happening on the web right now, this minute.You are correct in that there is no rational reason for it. And you have missed the point entirely if you think it has no value.BAM! There's your value.