The Rise of The Real Time Web

Those of us living in the new media/tech industry, have probably postulated about lifestreaming (or lifelogging) and presence sharing from time to time-and have probably been doing so for years.

We recently lived through the rise and fall of Second Life (I still love this platform for what it represents) and are witnessing the rise of platforms such as UStream.tv and Loopt. On a much larger scale, we are witnessing the incredible success of Twitter, and for better or worse were recently graced with the redesign of Facebook, which aims to bring you the social news, as it happens.

These platforms may be different in the way they present information, but they all share a few core elements that are becoming an increasing part of all of our lives; whether we are aware of it or not (and whether we like it or not),

• Real Time Social Interaction


• Real Time Multi Point Experience Sharing


• Non-Stop Streams of Social Data

These attributes have had a profound effect on early  adopters seeking ways to bring new layers of interaction to existing media, and new ways to broadcast their lives. But these platforms are not just for the diggerati anymore. All of us are slowly being inducted into this way of life. The real time web is slowly being infused into all media (and not just media on your PC).

This morning at the iMedia Breakthrough summit, one of the conference sponsors, Meebo, gave a presentation on the integration of their IM platform across multiple sites. Their message was aimed at advertisers, but something much more profound was present in the presentation. The ability to bring your friends with you across the web in real time, sharing content, ideas and experiences brought the notion of the real time, or experience web front and center.

I strongly recommend that you look at what Meebo is doing outside of their core platform, Meebo.com. I urge you to think about what Meebo is doing as more than just instant messaging; as it is, in essence a virtual world, much like Second Life. The only difference is that there are no avatars and it is not in 3D. If you disagree with me, great; but think about it a little before you simply dismiss what I am saying.