Real time search is hot (theoretically), but Google is struggling to deliver results. They’ve started some real-time stuff in Gmail, though, with interactive widgets within emails. And now they’re branching out to real time on YouTube.
At first glance, real time video sounds even harder than real time search—and yeah, YouTube’s popular, but shouldn’t the Goog focus on what they do best/actually make money on?
Do not despair, however! It’s not real-time video they’re using on YouTube: it’s real-time search—in the comments. I know, just what you waited your whole life for.

As RWW puts it, YouTube comments are “notoriously useless.” Unless your job has to do with reading empty abuse or praise. That’s a pretty crappy job.
However, there is at least one useful application here: reputation monitoring. Not that anyone around here is an expert and published author on the topic or anything, but if you’re posting on the most popular video site on the web, it can always be useful to see what people are saying about you.
As yet, YouTube isn’t offering RSS feeds on the results however, which necessitates periodic manual searches for your (clients’) terms. However, as RWW notes, “In addition to search results continuously updated ala Facebook’s newsfeed (’3 new results’) there’s also a frequently-updated list of ‘trending topics’ on the search page.”
What do you think? Will this tool be useful for you? Do you want real time YouTube comments search, or do you wish Google would hurry up and get real-time search?
















