The year of real-time web services - the next Big Thing.
Technological innovations are happening at an unprecedented rate, particularly those that have to do with web services. In the last couple of years we’ve seen social networking and location based services as the basis for many new products. This year the focus is on real-time services. Services that deliver information almost as soon as something happened. In other words, instant gratification.
When real-time is applied on top of the social and/or location based layer, it leads to a richer, more compelling interaction. Google Realtime has for instance its real-time search display results not just from traditional sources by trolling the web, but from facebook and twitter feeds, resulting in a more accurate, powerful query.
Groupon, the flash deal site, has started a Groupon Now for mobile users who are displayed deals based on their location and proximity to relevant deals at that moment in time.
Another mobile app, Geoloki, provides a valuable service to users who are looking for prompts in real-time as they go about their daily lives trying to maintain the delicate yet ever fragile work-life balance. The user can enable location based reminders for helping them remember picking the milk from the grocery as they are passing by the store. What sets this app apart from other reminder apps is its execution in reminding us, when we truly could make use of a reminder.
We could use real-time products for several different situations , and we are likely to see several of these being marketed this year and beyond. However, real-time can suffer from being too fast for its own good. Remember Google Wave? What is perhaps needed are Right Time services - real-time, timed right according to the context of the product itself.
As more products get to market, newer technology and fresh ideas meld together to create ever creative and increasingly useful products. Do you think there are other such trends that will emerge this year?
