Youtube joins the real-time revolution

YOUTUBE IS LEAPING onto the 'we want it all now, give it to us' bandwagon and bringing out a real-time comment search function.

Facebook and Twitter announced yesterday that they would be partnering with Microsoft's search engine Bling, er, Bing to offer real-time search function, so you don't miss a single lunch-related comment. Google also linked up with Twitter to offer the same kind of service, though not in real-time.

The Youtube comment searching function is actually quite similar to the current Twitter search, complete with 'trending topics' showing most talked about subjects.

The Twitter, Facebook and Youtube announcements are a sign of the growing trend toward absolutely instant information. Greed may be bad when it comes to bankers, but it's good for online content, apparently, or at least the people running these companies seem to think it's essential.

Case in point is Mozilla's new open source email management project, Raindrop. It will allow users to view Youtube directly in their Inbox, because everyone hates having to wait all that time, clicking on a link and waiting for a window to load.

One of the obvious benefits of real-time search is the immediacy of news that can be sourced. As well as the latest fashion, technology, cars and so on, people want the latest news and information and they want it fast.

Not to mention the money that can be made from brands that want to see what people are looking at in order to get in on the action and sell them more stuff.

But if you ask us, a lot of people say a lot of things on the Internet, and not all of it is really relevant or even vaguely interesting. With real-time, you'll get all the annoying dross as well.

So, practically, we can see it'll be interesting to watch what are the most discussed topics and there's no doubt that there is a lot of value in social media data. But only if the wheat can be separated from the chaff, we think. µ