There has been a lot of talk recently about Real-Time Search. Both Bing and Google are integrating it into their search results as well as creating their own real-time search engines: Google Realtime Search and Bing Social. To do this they have both made deals with Facebook and Twitter to get access to their data.
The big guys are not the only ones in the real-time search arena. There are a number of smaller niche startups that have jumped into the fray. Below is a list of 5 of the top players:
OneRiot
OneRiot’s take on things is they believe that we are suffering from information overload, and they are probably right too. To combat this they have created their own page-rank algorithm called PulseRank that rates the “social energy†or buzz of content rather than when it was created. OneRiot gets it’s data from sites like Twitter, Digg MySpace and Facebook. Their mantra is “Google’s Adsense for the real-time web.” OneRiot no longer has a consumer facing real-time search. (see comments)
Topsy
Topsy is purely a search engine for Twitter. It ranks it’s results by how influential the creator of the content. It will give a higher ranking to the content from the most influential Twitter accounts about the subject. It is probably the best way to find the movers and the shakers in particular industries and topics. OneRiot sent it’s search to Topsy when they shut down their real-time search.
Collecta
Probably the most robust real-time search engine on the list, as it gathers data from the big sites like Twitter, YouTube and Facebook, but also from blog post, blog comments and news feeds from around the internet. Users can choose what types of content they would like to search: Stories, Comments, Updates, Photos and Videos. Collecta’s backend is powered by the same technology as Google’s Wave.
Social Mention
I’ve added this seach engine to replace OneRiot. Social Mention is also considered a brand management tool which allows you to track conversations about your product or company as well as any keywords you choose to search for. Social Mention monitors 100+ social media platforms including: Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed, YouTube, Digg, Google and many more.
There are other startups out there. Let us know if you have any to add to this list.
