Realtime search - you can discuss it, theorize about it, and sometimes it’s time to just show it.
I twittered earlier this week that I was watching the swine flu concept evolve in the Collecta realtime search internal product. I got a pretty significant amount of responses asking me to share, so why not.
But first, my reflection…
After spending hours entranced by the range of images, news stories, twitter messages and comments flowing from various points on the web, I became even more sure that realtime search is a thing we will rely on in the future.
Why? Because much of the relevant information being published on this super-timely topic is headed for one of the following places:
- A single site with limited readership
- A feed, to be experienced in a flow of other homogeneous feeds
- And worst of all, an index - to be searched later, when the full impact of the facts, opinions and impact has faded.
All 3 places are less than optimal. Readers interested in a topic deserve to have the best and most timely information come to them. Clean and focused.
Another thing occurred to me - and this is a HUGE point - the story I am assembling in my head about the topic is enlightened and in aggregate it’s editorially comprehensive!
Facts and information are forming before my eyes. Within a couple of minutes I literally watched the public awareness evolve. Can it be transferred by eating pork? No. Does Israel have the unilateral right to rename the disease? Maybe not.
It is amazing what the collective consciousness can share when viewed through this new Collecta window.
There’s also weirdness. Right-wing, Left-wing and everything in between. Did Obama ask media to overemphasize it to mobilize the country? Did Rumsfeld cause it to pump his portfolio? Maybe Bush caused it as an act of vengeance… ? It’s all in there.
My point is that for the first time I am in a position to aggregate the stories, blogs, photos and comments while they’re happening. I can get the whole picture right now. Then it’s up to me to sort out bias. To distill facts. To come to an enlightened opinion on the topic. This can take just a few minutes - the information is flowing right in front of me.
So, this site is just a sampler. There are bugs to work out, user experience and design dimensions to share. A long way to go. And when we launch in the near future with a full-fledged search, it won’t be a replacement for traditional web search.
It will, however, give users a new, more comprehensive view of what’s going on in the world right now.
Click the logo below to see realtime web results for swine flu.
Illustration and design by Kurt Aspland
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