Who rules real-time search?
Real-time search engines have proliferated over the last month, with a series of launches from start-ups like Topsy, almost.at and Scoopler. The companies are hoping to edge in on a space that Google co-founder Larry Page has admitted is a weakness for the search giant. And they’re using microblogging and social bookmarking sites as tools to figure out what content is relevant up to the second. Real-time search is valuable because it lets you know what’s happening right now on any given topic. Companies use it to handle customer service. News junkies use it to follow political events. And I’ve tested out nine real-time search offerings by pointing them all to Iran’s disputed elections to compare their results. At the end of this post, I’ve also covered two further contenders who launched just in the last couple of days. The issue for real-time search is figuring out the right balance between immediacy, popularity and relevance. Stream everything without any filtering, and a search coul
