Have you ever been bored and just for the fun of it googled yourself? I mean, c'mon, you know you have. You probably answered one of those Myspace surveys and found question number 36 asking you to find out what was the first link you found when typing in your name. It is okay to admit this, because just like skipping school, everybody has done it at least once. Now as long as you are not a public figure, and I am guessing you are not, you either found references to some company you had never heard of or a link to some weird sexual device, but either way, you did not find yourself...but wait...that is about to change.
I mention all of this because information in real time is about to change. As of last week, Google, with the help of Twitter, has entered Real Time Search. This means, you can now get up to the date updates on searches. Now imagine the on-going Tiger Woods story, instead of just typing in Tiger Woods in Google to find out the latest and getting a variety of hits, you can now find the latest story, article, or even the latest twit, on the item you are searching for. Now you have to no longer wonder which hit/link has the latest information on a particular story, because you just need to search the Real Time Search engine and find out. Try it out, if you have not. Simply go to WWW.Google.Com/Trends and type something relevant in the box. I recommend a hot news story. This technology, I suspect, will be groundbreaking once perfected, instead of just getting a list of links, which will lead you to the story, you are looking for. Imagine getting up to the date story on the latest news from the Afghanistan war or the Climate talks going on right now in Copenhagen. Now this was announced and went live last week, so I am sure there are still some kinks to work out in the system, but Google could not have picked a better partner in this program than Twitter. Twitter does not have the users that a Social Network application like Facebook has, but if you have used twitter before, you know it is a really good application for spreading news and other small bits of information. Now imagine another Social Network device trying to go public like that...say Facebook going public and changing it's privacy statements on all of it's users. Well...wait it did..a few days later after the Google announcement. Facebook revamped it's privacy statement in the thought of giving users more ways to share information, however just like the Y2K virus...these changes seemed to be better on paper as many people are now enraged that the default privacy statement, that all of there profiles have reverted to, is allowing more information on their profiles to be public now, than ever before.
Now before anything is said Facebook and Twitter, despite the fact that they are considered Social Networking applications, are two different applications altogether. Twitter at it's best, is a simple way to convey quick and small chunks of information to a large number of people. Twitter was, and in my current opinion, the best application to enter Real Time Search and I am interested to see what this will mean for Twitter's account numbers in the future as Real Time Search continues to grow. Facebook on the other hand is a more personal application where you store your pics, address, and to some people even their phone number. Now imagine this information being public and even showing up in Google...wait it does.
Now I am bringing up all of this, because the main question is, in all of this, do you want to be a part of this? Do you want to be a part of Real Time Search? If not just go into your privacy statements, no harm, no foul, but in doing so you are not becoming part of the discussion. This is going to be the burning question in the future and the one that you have to decide on your own.
It seems, in the end, that the Real-Time search is going not just going to change the way in which we get information but also the way in which we share information going forward.
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