
Google Next Victim Of Creative Destruction?  - nickb
http://www.alleyinsider.com/2009/2/google-next-victim-of-creative-destruction-goog
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mattmaroon
This is beyond ridiculous. Real time search is something you care about a
tiny, tiny fraction of a percent of the time. And when you do, Twitter is
still pretty near worthless. You heard a plane crashed in the river, so you
search Twitter, and see a bunch of posts like "OMG a plane crashed in a river,
now I'm going to the gym." and maybe a picture of a submerged plane. Who
cares?

You won't destroy Google by building a search service that does nothing but
break news 5 minutes before CNN does.

~~~
nostrademons
The killer app for real time search seems to be in figuring out whether this
week's Heroes episode is worth watching.

~~~
patio11
I think

washeroesgoodthisweek.com

is still open. Sadly, I think you can get the job done with one static HTML
page these days, and it does not include <h1>YES</h1> in it.

Edit: My little brother remarked to me, regarding "What GPS tracking unit?":
"It seems like there is only one good writer on Heroes, and his contract
dictates that he only be told to work on scenes between Hiro and Ando."

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gojomo
"Dear Google: Please buy Twitter. Signed, a Twitter investor."

The idea that real-time search will be big is still interesting.

However, seeking a twitch-timescale update on everything is ultimately a bad
habit, except among certain kinds of professional investors. Considering the
author's example of a mysterious rumble in Fall's Church, Virginia: people
don't benefit from the distraction of twitter-scale updates; the wiser
strategy is to get one authoritative report when the story is settled. (The
few genuine "holy crap do I need to do something?" situations are too rare to
build a giant search business on.)

~~~
tectonic
Although using Twitter for real-time emergency response at a governmental or
NGO level sounds quite interesting.

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angstrom
If by interesting you mean the twitter 'Fail Whale' + FEMA, then yes, that
would be...interesting.

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sachinag
If real time information was such a big damn deal, Wikipedia wouldn't be the
top hit for every other Google search. Honestly, CNN TV/.com/etc still wins
for breaking news (they had more viewers than any of the OTA networks). So
Twitter wins by five minutes. Seriously, who gives a damn? Just media navel-
gazers.

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yters
While normal ads won't work on twitter, viral marketing will. So now,
advertisers win by creating content people'll twit about. Perhaps even paying
people to advertise to their friends. Shouldn't be hard to introduce with so
many people looking for a source of income. Not sure I like where this'll
go...

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froo
One of the ways I wouldn't mind advertising in Twitter is if I could get a
compendium of Tweets emailed to me by Twitter every X hours - they could just
put traditional banner advertising in each email as a sponsor link.

One of the things I like about twitter is the short form blogging. One of the
things I don't like is having a twitter client distract me every few minutes
(so I don't use one) or if I use the site instead, having to flip through a
couple of pages of noise to find the little gems contained within.

I think a compendium of tweets would compile these two aspects of twitter, yet
also give twitter the ability to make revenue off my attention.

my 2 cents.

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herval
The closing of the article says it all... shame I read it all before getting
to it:

"Disclosure. I am CEO of betaworks. betaworks is a Twitter shareholder. We are
also a Tweetdeck shareholder. betaworks companies are listed on our web site."

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mkmark
Just posted this: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=473209>.

Its funny how Fred Wilson and others linked to the original post without
commenting on the fundamental flaws in the twitter-Google discussion.

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prbuckley
Google has not really cracked realtime search yet. Could this be the kink in
their armor?

~~~
peregrine
How haven't they? You can search Google News which searches all of the top
stories from top news sites. Use Google Blog Search to do the same. Sure they
can't search Facebook(unless allowed) or some of twitter but that isn't a kink
in their armor.

Maybe our definitions of realtime search are different; what is yours?

