Ask HN: WTF Is The Value of Real-time Search?

Real time search is not for researching a particular topic, that is what regular search is for. Real time search is used to find out what is happening in the world right now. For example, one day Pandora stopped playing music. I checked my connection and it was fine, then I went on twitter and searched for the word Pandora and BAM! 10 results saying Twitter is down and one results which said "Twitter was down, back up now." So I reload Pandora, and sure enough, it was working.<p>A second time, my wife was stuck in a traffic jam about 1pm. We thought it might be an accident, but weren't sure, so I searched twitter for the words "accident" along with her location, and BAM! Not only did I get tweets describing the accident, but also a link to an obscure, buried news report on it.<p>THAT is the beauty of real time search.

Ordinarily I would be merely skeptical of a business model which a) competes with Google b) in search advertising c) to technically adept folks d) who never, ever click on ads.<p>The fact that it is a type of search which generates <i>no commercial value</i> is merely icing on the cake.<p>However, this is not the first time tech influencers have caught the fever for something which refuses to be monetizable. (Lest we forget, real time search is a buzzword now coming to the fore to make a basket of the last buzzwords finally see revenue. Microblogging, etc.)<p>[P.S. The tone of this post is not what we encourage around here. Skepticism is fine, please be civil in the future. Listen to Smokey the Bear: Only you can prevent Reddit.]

I used to think that until several months ago when I was on campus and got a call from a friend saying a gunman was roaming about, armed and ready to unload. The first thing I did was search for #uci (my uni) on Twitter and got hundreds of tweets from students around campus who were being herded to back rooms and put in lock down. Honestly, Twitter was the only place I could go to find that sort of news. The media picked up on the story about 30 minutes into it, so I thank Twitter for giving me the heads up to get the hell out of there, else I could have waited around a bit longer to see what was really happening, putting myself in a lot of risk. I mean, I probably would've beaten the gunman to death if he ever approached me, so Twitter really just spared me the discomfort of a week's worth of sore fists.

Among other things, it is the fastest source of news. And in news (as the name suggests), fast is everything.

"Real time search" is just a way to make sure you're not the only one experiencing a problem...<p>ie: gmail is down, cops hassling people @ a political rally, recommendations for parking in Miami Beach, reviews of Movies by real people, etc etc

As a software developer whose customers happen to also use twitter, I leave search.twitter.com open all day. Listening to happy customers tweet about our product is motivating. In addition, it keeps us honest - the negative feedback is unfiltered.<p>In short, twitter is a great way to ask "How do people _really_ feel about our software?"

Of course it's not particularly useful if you're searching for "hotdogs"... unless there happens to be some current event involving hotdogs.<p>Obviously "real-time search" is all about <i>real-time</i> events. Stuff that's happened in the last few minutes, hours, days.<p>I've found myself using search.twitter.com for more and more things. For example, if I know some new movie trailer just came out, it's probably easier to find links to it on Twitter search than Google search. Or if some service I rely on just went down Twitter <i>will</i> know about it before Google search.

The key question really is: Is anything interesting happening fast enough that I want to see it right now?<p>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)<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>BAM! There's your value.

It's not hype unfortunately.<p>Even businesses should be worried. Now I need to hire someone full time to tweet, digg, stumbleupon, and start a linkedin group, facebook group, a couple of blogs all the while making sure we're in Google's top 10 for relevant search words.<p>Whatever happened to build it and they will come? Information overload..? Yes!

It's not the people saying "hotdog", it's the people saying "Oscar Mayer hotdog". Brands are excited about real-time search because it's the first time that nonsensical chatter has actually propagated beyond people's lips on to the Internet where they can monitor it on an ongoing basis. ... Just sayin'

There is a great deal of risk in real-time news. If you search for a term many people are searching for, there is a big spam problem.<p>Twitter has done little to nothing to fight this spam problem. You could say the same for any of their spam problems - they have quite a few.<p>That said, I think many big names are being _extremely_ naive in calling the innovation "real time". It is open, social, and public. There is actually no real-time UX in twitter.com - the closest is "N new results" popup on a search page, requiring a click. I have no idea why election.twitter.com hasn't been incorporated into search. Actually, I have a very good idea why they take so long to do *, but I digress.<p>The point is that it doesn't matter. There is little to no appreciable difference between real-time and 15 seconds lagged for tweets.

Realtime = Knowing who just trashed my brand, so I can go and fix it before or while everyone's paying attention to the issue. Including 'happening right now' sales in my search for an affordable camera. Hearing news that much sooner than I can hear it today.<p>Realtime + local = Knowing whether that restaurant I want to go to has seats available right now. Finding out about the wreck 2 miles down the road, so I can exit now. Asking if anyone in a several-block radius has a particular part in stock and getting an answer back quickly.

I can't really think of a better way to follow breaking opinions than real-time search. Sure, if you wait a while you can get news indexing from Google, but it's the bias that you want. Especially if, say, you're at a conference/event and want to know what's kicking. We found real-time search particularly valuable for a month-long comedy festival, as it let opinions aggregate, yet much of that information (so-and-so is doing a really cool show this year) wasn't picked up by, say, Google.

I think the value out there right now is significantly higher for businesses and brands. That's okay and usually how the cycle goes. "computers" were first for corporations with mainframes, then the "personal computer" came along.<p>Anything that makes information flow at a significantly faster rate is valuable. For the average every day person, it needs to be presented in a way that's simple and makes sense. Twitter describing itself as the pulse of the internet/world is something I find very powerful.

We can't really know at this point. It's just trying to do something useful with a big pool of information that is a growing part of how we communicate with each other. People do go to search.twitter.com.<p>This is more a kind of thing where you say 'there must be something useful we can do with this' then the kind of thing where say 'this is the problem we are solving.'

Real-time results have a human element to them. It was tweeted by a 'real' person. The result is what is happening in that person's life and they felt inclined enough to tweet it. Top search hits are usually professional blogs, journalist articles or wikipedia. These have lost that personal connection.

What you (and some other people) are really saying is that you don't want real-time search to be the default. I'm not sure it should be or not, but I'd agree that we need to have a way to disable it lest we get too much noise.

It allows hipsters to know what is "so hot right now".<p>For people who can't really think for themselves, they can just search and see what everyone else thinks.

Finding people that are interested in your topic, right now. There is certainly a value for that -- especially if you want to sell something.

It would be kind of useful for seeing status updates of your friends in real time.

real time search <i>is</i> useful and probably monetizeable, but extremely niche. i have heard plenty of examples, like some described above, where i've felt "yeah, ok, i could see that." but those times when it might be useful might occur twice a year, maybe 3 times a year? so the market is incredibly small. it is most certainly not a threat to google, in my opinion. i am shocked that oneriot has raised $27M and only have a few hundred thousand hits a month. i think real time search is way overvalued in terms of growth potential, and will probably find equilibrium as an occasionally useful niche utility.