Hot Innovation Trend: The Real-Time Web

Other than maybe “cloud computing” (which I still don’t really get) and mobile computing (in all of its permutations, but especially on the iPhone), it’s hard to think of a hotter Internet trend right now than the “real-time Web.” For most people, the “real-time Web” is synonymous with Twitter, but the real-time Web goes way beyond Twitter to a fundamental re-thinking of the way the Web works and the way content is archived online. That fact itself has huge follow-on consequences for companies like Google, Yahoo and Microsoft — all of which rose to prominence when the real-time Web was nothing more than a vague construct of what might be possible. Rob Hof of Business Week recently wrote a fairly comprehensive overview of the real-time Web (with an emphasis on the cool real-time start-ups being funded by John Borthwick’s VC shop Betaworks), and Read Write Web recently highlighted 10 Useful Examples of the Real-Time Web, including search, real-time publishing and the real-time Web of people.

With so many different ways to leverage the real-time Web, the upcoming Real-Time Web Summit hosted by Read Write Web that’s taking place two weeks from now in Silicon Valley looks like a winner.

[image: John Borthwick of Betaworks via Business Week]