PubSubHubbub has become the standard protocol for real-time RSS and Atom feed subscription and delivery. But not everybody wants to host their own PubSubHubbub hub in the same way that hardly anybody hosts their own website, and why cloud services in general have become so popular. Guzzle Ayup has entered the market to offer a hosted PubSubHubbub hub service.
Echo, best known for its online commenting tools, recently launched an ambitious service called StreamServer to aid brands in creating their own “white label” social media sites. Media brands like ESPN and Newsweek want to capitalize on the investment in their content. The problem is that the attention of consumers and lucrative revenue streams are focused on on social sites like Twitter and Facebook. Echo StreamServer API aims to tip the balance in favor of brands by offering the tools to forge scalable near real-time social sites of their own.
SXSW was the source of a flood of real-time information on the web. Information flowed from attendees using social media tools to share what was being discussed, their thoughts and their experiences. This information was amplified further by the information be re-shared (retweeted on Twitter) and by other opinions being expressed about all things SXSW. But how is it that you ensure you don’t miss an important piece of information from within your social media connections or even outside of your normal social media circles? From an earlier post on Cadmus, an algorithmic Twitter feed service, you may be aware of the idea of curation – filtering content to ensure that you don’t miss the most relevant information. But who performs this curation and what roles do technology have in the process?
Real-time and the real-time web continue to be a hot topic of conversation but is the term “real-time” getting used correctly? When we talk about real-time technology are we truly describing what the technology is delivering or is it being used and abused as just another marketing buzz word? Can we class any of the current technology solutions as truly real-time and can other solutions be defined in any other way? Is it too late to save “real-time” or will it forever be lost to marketing?
In what many are calling a boon to real-time search, Topsy today announced a new round of funding that doubles the money it’s raised. The company uses indexes Twitter and makes the results available on its website, as well as through its Topsy API, which sees more than half a billion queries per month.
In the past months we have covered real-time client push services and seen the introduction of real-time client push technology and APIs to a number of services such as Superfeedr and DataSift. This focus on real-time push to client applications, and in particular web browser applications, is very exciting. The initial assumption would be that this movement has been triggered by an advancement in technology, and to some degree that is the case, but it might surprise you to know that the ability to push real-time updates into a web browser isn’t new and has in fact been around for a number of years.
It’s been a quick transition from app provider to API provider for photo-sharing Instagram and its Instagram API. Today the company launched a new Instagram Real-time API, which provides access to the site’s content via webhooks as photos are added that match pre-determined criteria.
TokBox, the web-based video chat and conferencing application, has announced a change in directions. Its popular TokBox application shall cease to be available and instead the company will focus on its OpenTok API, with all its energies on increasing API adoption with a developer contest to go along with it. To get the ball rolling, today it’s announced 30 new partners already on the platform.
Topsy, a search tool based on real-time social media activity, has unveiled a new service called Topsy Social Analytics that tracks the rise and fall in popularity of specific pieces of online content as well as broader trends in online discussion. The analytics tool, like the Topsy API, uses publicly available data from Twitter to rank content and identify trends.
During the past four months we’ve seen not one but two well known real-time search engines disappear. First there was OneRiot, which in October 2010 decided to focus on advertising. More recently, Collecta closed it’s real-time search engine and API to focus on alternative real-time products. Digging further into real-time search offerings you will also discover that crowdeye has also decided to pull its real-time search engine. This now appears to leave Topsy, and of course Google as the main players focusing on building a real-time search destination. Does this trend signal the end for all real-time search engines or just that their focus has been wrong?
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