Realtime Web – Interesting companies in this space

jdb — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 08:03:21 +0000

The Real-time web is where the next wave of innovation is happening on the web. Real-time web is simply a term used to describe the content created in real-time on the web. It’s mostly realized by users armed with smart phones and/or users with an easier means to generate content in real-time. A challenging aspect of this development is that it’s harder to filter and deliver context sensitive data to the end user since everything is happening in the real-time (Even Google has not yet been able to deliver contextual “real-time” data. I’m sure they are working on it). Here are a few ventures at center of this “Real-time” web wave:

Twitter of course is the poster child for the real-time web. Twitter asks its users a simply question of “what’s happening?” and expects the user to provide an answer in 140 characters or less. The mass adoption of this service, has led to interesting outcomes. For example, The Bombay shootings last year the Hudson airplane crash were first reported on Twitter. As the traditional news media is loosing their relevance, the news media outfits are looking to redefine themselves and most of them have a presence on Twitter.

Ustream.com is another interesting venture that helps users stream live video based content. Ustream.com has already gained the attention of the large TV networks who are now contemplating streaming their content live via ustream.com

SubPly is company that specializes in providing captions for video feeds in various languages. The captions are produced by real-life employees who transcribe/translate a recording or a live feed for a fee. This technology is amazingly useful for enterprises, that struggle to share their video content. Since the captions are available, enterprise searches can pick up and index the text, which means your video repository is now fully searchable.

Foursquare is another company innovating in the social media space, connecting friends with each other around a geographical location by announcing their current physical location. There have been other players in this space, but foursquare has added a gaming element which has greatly encouraged users to sign-up and participate. Currently, the gaming element simply awards points and badges to participation, but the gaming element can be tweaked any which way to make the interactions more exciting and entertaining.

Artwork/thumbnail from dpstyles’s photostream on Flickr

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Realtime Web – Interesting companies in this space