Much Ado About the Real-Time Web?

I’m doing a presentation this week in Burlington looking at the most interesting technology trends for 2010, and one of the no-brainer items is the real-time Web. The problem, however, is the more time I spend looking at the real-time Web, the more I wonder about why people are so excited.

I get that information published on Twitter, Facebook and blogs will be instantly and readily available. I get that news reporting will be instantaneous, and I get that search will become a lot more interesting because it will deliver up-to-the-second information. That’s all very exciting but is it enough to justify the hype surrounding real-time? In other words, is that it?

I guess it might come across as naive but shouldn’t there be a lot more involved? What is the significance of the real-time Web other than information gets published, delivered and consumed faster than ever before? How does that really change things?

In a sense, it’s difficult not be think that the hype about real-time reflects its potential as opposed to the current reality. Looking ahead, you can see that real-time could have a major impact on online collaboration. As well, the ability to analyze a huge amount of data in real-time will have a major impact on e-commerce, pricing and inventory management.

That’s all well and good but for now, real-time strikes me as interesting but not tangible enough to get caught up on the hype machine.