Circulation

Is something big going on right now? Curious to see what is going on in real-time, right now?

Check out Collecta‘s real-time search engine. Collecta searches news sites, social media and blogs for constant updates. (These are the places where breaking news is likely to show up first). So let’s try it out…

Pick a subject.

Any subject.

President Obama’s Health Care speech to Congress? Michael Jackson’s death? The war in Iraq or Afghanistan?

How about Kanye West interrupting Taylor Swift during her acceptance speech after winning the Best Female Video? Lots of folks weren’t too happy about that, which you can see in the real-time search. I captured the real-time action in the video below. (Warning: watch out for the potty mouths). I typed in “kanye west” in the search box and Collecta gave me the results and constantly provided updates from people’s blogs and tweets. It was pretty interesting to watch for a few seconds to see what the mood is like out in TV-land.

HGTV’s Design Star is also on the tube at the moment so I did a little search on that too.

While a lot (most!?) of this information is fluff/non-consequential, I see several benefits in real-time search:

1- To get a feel of the mood about certain subjects
2- To know what’s going on right now – be in the know
3- Find out what’s popular

Any other ideas of the benefits of real-time search? Implications for use in higher education, libraries or businesses?