Comments on: Real-Time But Not Ready For Prime Time

By: The Inside Word: Why Real-Time Search Is Overrated — paidContent

The Inside Word: Why Real-Time Search Is Overrated — paidContent — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 23:13:13 +0000

[...] “Yes, recency / freshness is certainly a concern in information seeking,” Tunkelang writes. “But it If you like this story, please share [...]

By: Paid Content : The Inside Word: Why Real-Time Search Is Overrated

Paid Content : The Inside Word: Why Real-Time Search Is Overrated — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 03:41:28 +0000

[...] “Yes, recency / freshness is certainly a concern in information seeking,” Tunkelang writes. “But it’s not the only one, and I doubt it’s the dominant one. Moreover, the dismissal [...]

By: Can Real-Time Search Help Hedge Funds? | The Noisy Channel

Can Real-Time Search Help Hedge Funds? | The Noisy Channel — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 13:33:12 +0000

[...] haven’t exactly been generous in my opinons about the widespread obsession with “real-time” search. But in today’s Telegraph [...]

By: Daniel Tunkelang

Daniel Tunkelang — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 22:55:00 +0000

Agreed, you goal is more ambitious. But your interface is a bit overwhelming. The script approach may err too far on the side of simplicity, as you point out, but I think you need to aim for something a bit less complex if you want significant user adoption.

By: James Ostheimer

James Ostheimer — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 18:00:26 +0000

Those scripts are great, but they basically just slap Twitter results at the top of the search page, which is pretty similar to what Google does for news, and works okay.

I’ve been trying to actually evaluate all the results together and rank them; realtime and old style search, together. My thought is wouldn’t it be nice to do a search and get the best real-time results mixed in with the best deep web search results with logical rankings (most recent and most well shared will bubble up, but older popular links maintain value).

James

By: Daniel Tunkelang

Daniel Tunkelang — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 05:07:09 +0000

James, thanks for the link–that’s an interesting approach. Another way to get something along those lines is to use a Greasemonkey script to merge Twitter results into those from Google: http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/43451

Or, for those who prefer Bing: http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/50665

By: James ostheimer

James ostheimer — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 03:08:07 +0000

I have to say that I agree with this analysis, just realtime is not useful in all contexts. It seems that most places are going with the model of supplementing real time results with crawling shared urls, I’ve been trying it the other way using regular search results supplemented with realtime information at http ://www.re-searchr.com. Not sure about how well it works but I like this concept better than the status quo.

James

By: Daniel Tunkelang

Daniel Tunkelang — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 18:55:58 +0000

Facebook is a walled garden–I think that’s a separate problem.

I do see value in news / blog alerts (routing / filtering if you prefer those terms), though I don’t really care if it’s “real time” or 24 hours delayed. RSS works well at the scale I care about, e.g., my vanity queries. I would hardly use RSS for alerts about Iran. There what I want is summarization and exploratory search. I do care about freshness, but today’s online news sites are fresh enough for me. I don’t see the value in reading the latest tweet–I’m happy to wait a little for some aggregation and de-noising.

By: Daniel Lemire

Daniel Lemire — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 18:44:20 +0000

Are you kidding me?

I am in academia. For my colleagues, real-time collaboration means sending emails with attached word documents.

And many colleagues print out their emails so that they can read them on paper.

We just recently started to archive (poorly) meeting notes on some web site. These documents are not even indexed! And I am pretty sure my colleagues do not even know that you can index them without exposing them to Google. OH? And it generally takes weeks if not months before the documents get posted.

I don’t doubt some people need real-time, but my business (academia) does not need real time. I am quite happy to be a few weeks or months late on the latest buzz. Heck! I don’t even mind being a few years behind.

BTW Facebook still does not offer RSS feeds or any kind of notification for its posting boards.

By: jeremy

jeremy — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 16:10:09 +0000

Yeah, that’s my question.. “search” vs. “routing and filtering”. Do people really need to search in real time? Or do they need real-time “channels” (routes/filters/whatever)?

It seems to me that the latter would be useful. But the former?

By: Christopher Rines

Christopher Rines — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 06:03:43 +0000

Let me start by saying I wish these startups luck. I’m in the middle of it so I know how hard it is to build something and carve out a niche…

However…

The value of real-time streams decreases over time making a real-time search engine not all that useful; a normal search engine will do perfectly well, possibly better as it will theoretically group multiple data sources together by relevance rather than just the real-time stream(s).

Now better real-time filtering, that’s something of use.

By: Arne van Elk

Arne van Elk — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 23:04:49 +0000

Wise and necessary observation. Just checked Collecta myself, and though it looks interesting, it’s not delivering yet