

The questionable value of the real-time web - Demand-side attention economics - swombat
http://danieltenner.com/posts/0013-real-time-web.html

======
ThomPete
Consciousness work by filtering information. The problem with the real-time-
web is that it demands too much cognitive attention compared to what it was
supposed to give us in return (always relevant information in context).

But It's importance cannot be underestimated. In a better world, augmented
reality allows us to explore a reality with multiple layers and always
contextually relevant information.

With that in mind though, the current state of RTW is the stone age and we are
nothing but a bunch of slaves ploughing through an overwhelming amount of
information in order to find something of importance that we can then share
with others through some aggregator.

In a better world, we will still receive way to much information to ever
process. But instead of scanning each post as a separate entity, the RTW will
reflect an emerging alternate reality based on knowledge our needs.

Until then RTW will continue to include more and more sources communicating
most of them automatically, but my guess is that they will be part of a soup
of the augmented reality universe and serve to in the end create an
alternative matter based on information. Allowing for the construction of the
agumented layer.

There is huge start-up potential to figure out a way to filter information in
a way that allows for all sorts of information to pass through without any of
it being more important, but where it together will create an alternative
reality.

I would think that the next feature that aggregator will need to look at it a
better filtering only surfacing things to me when they are of importance
(again exactly like the brain works)

Sorry for the rant.

------
Maciek416
Good article.

The point about the term becoming muddled and meaningless is pretty spot on.
When I first started hearing this term being used all over the place (heck,
Toronto's already had a couple mini-conferences laced with this buzzword), I
assumed we were talking about systems with "real time" data flows like
Pachube.

Now the term seems to have boiled down to "I taped my F5 key down".

------
ivenkys
I am yet to find any use for the Real Time Web in whatever
(twitter,email,facebook,rss feeds) format. As a consumer none of these
actually enhance either my productivity or knowledge in anyway, they are
merely there for entertainment.

Surprisingly, the only exception to that is probably FreeNode IRC , certain
channels at least.

Yes, there are certain bloggers i want to read, certain discussions on HN that
i want to participate in but it takes time for me to assimilate and understand
what is going on, the RTW doesn't help me there.

~~~
greyman
I find twitter search useful. For example, when I was shopping for a newly
released netbook, I searched the keyword on twitter for a few days, to see
what people say about it and what new reviews are being released. After a few
days, I was able to detect the "mood", in other words, how people feel about
the product. That is very hard to achieve with just reading a professional
review.

More generally, if I want to know what _now_ is happening about something,
twitter can usually deliver that.

~~~
ivenkys
"I searched the keyword on twitter for a few days"

There, you have used Twitter in the fashion of the "traditional" web, you just
went to a RTW source thats all.

My point is i generally don't have any use for what "now" is happening,
anything that is of importance generally has a longer time span and relevance
to me and i don't "need" to know it straight away.

------
sant0sk1
The best use I've found of the "real-time web" is for tracking live sporting
events that I can't attend or stream over the Internet.

For example, I play fantasy football and I noticed during Sunday afternoon
that Kevin Smith (Lions' RB) suddenly stopped scoring me points. Did he get
injured? I don't have cable & Google's "recent results" showed nothing... so I
performed a Twitter search for his name and my worst fear was confirmed by
dozens of Lions fans on Twitter: he was out with an injury.

The result of my search wasn't desired, but the "real-time web" was the only
place to get the info.

------
rooshdi
I think the real value of the real-time web will show when the comments
sections of all webpages are in real-time. This will allow users who are
viewing an article on the same webpage, which may be over a decade old, to see
a comment appear as it is sent. This will encourage users to comment back and
forth across all webpages, no matter how old the page is, due to the real-time
appearance of comments.

~~~
jsdalton
What are the chances that someone viewing a decade-old article will just
happen to be viewing it at the exact same time as someone else is viewing it
AND at the exact same time that this other person is submitting a comment on
it?

~~~
rooshdi
A higher chance than you think, especially with search engines which offer
immense amounts of historical content. I believe if there was a comment system
put in place which informed visitors of how many other people were on the same
page with them, this may encourage readers to chat amongst each other in real-
time and bring life back to webpages which were once "ghost towns".

------
dimas
Would be the same to argue that TV is destructive because it has continuous
broadcast. Do not like it turn damn TV of. Regardless of how much buzz the
term has, it is valuable in some cases(some are mentioned din the article) and
it is up to the user to decide what value it has for him. Rather than talking
about negativity, just make it optional so user can make a choice of turning
it of or on.

------
edw519
This reminds me of a project I worked on in a large enterprise years ago. All
of their systems, believe it or not, were batch. Inventory, accounting, order
processing - all data was entered into hold files, or worse, filled out with
pencil and paper and turned into keypunch. All databases were updated in a
large batch overnight. (Today, it's hard to believe anyone ever did that.)

Our project was to migrate all apps to a new real time package. They spent
millions of dollars and when it was all done, the controller complained, "Who
decided that we needed real time Accounts Payable? Why would we ever want to
pay our bills _faster_?"

No one had ever asked that question before. No one even thought about it. We
had spent $1 million on a module nobody wanted because IT decided it.
Eventually he added procedures to continue to fill out all accounts payable
transactions with pencil and paper and enter them into the on-line system at
the end of the day. What a waste.

Same argument here. Some things you want faster. And you're willing to pay for
them, one way or the other. But other things should just stay the way the are.

Some things never change: you actually have to _think_ about your apps before
you implement them.

~~~
lhuang
I see this quite a bit in my current job.

Question for you, how did IT sell this to the business folks (or the buyer)?
Was this under the auspices of enterprise agility?

~~~
edw519
_Was this under the auspices of enterprise agility?_

Exactly. If a customer called in an order at 6:30 a.m., it didn't even get to
the data base for 18 hours. So there was no same day shipping and if it had to
be scheduled, the schedulers weren't even aware of it until the next day. Real
competitive disadvantage. Worth spending millions to solve.

Real time Accounts Receivables paid for itself by reducing Days Sales
Outstanding by one day. But real time Accounts Payable? Made no sense.

The IT solution was a blanket decision made multiple levels (and cities) away
from the people who actually did the work. Go figure.

~~~
lhuang
Man I see this so much at my job. Its amazing that architects don't catch
things like this. Was there any requirements written up or charters that
justified moving accounts payable to real-time?

Its pretty inane, as you point out, how companies blindly apply strategies.
Alot of times this is caused by simply cutting corners. If they would have had
a body write up requirements (even high-level) for each department the would
have caught this.

Were there any problems with the actual implementation? If there are these
kind of problems at the architecture level, I can only imagine the issues that
came up actually initiating and executing the program.

------
wallflower
Back in January, a guy at the coworking space I was at that day announced that
a plane had crashed into the Hudson. We were like - what? He said his
girlfriend worked in a building overlooking the Hudson and saw it - and
instant messaged him via AIM - and we tried to verify it. It seemed so out
there. A plane in the Hudson?!

Twitter didn't have any info on Flight 1549 for a minute or so. In fact, the
real time Summize search engine backend - seemed to be lagging in its indexing
that morning. CNN and the other news networks were still reporting the same
political/celebrity news of the moment.

Personal word of mouth just barely beats Twitter for real-time* information
but it's very close. It's true crowd-sourcing (though questionable why people
will tweet they are in an earthquake while it's happening - and not be safer).

* - My hardware/software RT engineer friends scoff at the mis-use of the RT term.

~~~
absconditus
What is the value to knowing this information as soon as possible?

~~~
wallflower
Excellent question. I can't think of a good answer. I originally thought it
was about ego (e.g. knowing about something quicker than the general public).
However, I think, personally, it's more about being able to observe an event
from the distance of a first-person third-party (#lessconf is a great example)
as the event unfolds (in, yes, "real-time") The thirst to acquire
knowledge/news without the cost of having to actually have a personal or even
virtual relationship with those sharing.

------
greyman
>>> If you’re a consumer of information (and we all are), turn off the live
notifications, unless you need the information for your work. <<<

This looks like a common knowledge to fight distraction, but anyway: I
currently experiment with email notification, and I start to reconsider using
it again. The point is, that the small blurb doesn't actually distract me that
much, and I immediately see that nothing important is coming, and as a result,
I doesn't have an urge to check if some important email didn't come. And if
something important came, I just know that immediately.

------
hooande
So what is the value of the real time web?

This article seems to say it's about immediacy, about finding out things
faster than you would have before.

I've also heard that the real time web acts as a filter for news, so you can
use the people you follow on twitter or your facebook to find out what
information is important.

I know a lot of people on here are working on real time apps...what do you
think that value is to the consumer?

~~~
rooshdi
The newer information is, the more valuable it tends to be to the consumer.
People prefer to know what's going on sooner than later. Just look at old
newspapers, nobody buys them except for historians and newspaper collectors.

------
ericb
The term is nebulous, but I don't see the value as questionable. For example,
google "new ubuntu release."

The result isn't even close to what you want--the real time web will be a good
thing.

