Karolina Żernicka
Real-time search - the future of the Internet?

The emergence of a social Web has become a great challenge to traditional search engines. They strive to meet the demand for high quality up-to-date information reflecting what has been happening in the world in the last hours, minutes or even seconds. The solution may be real-time search, which enables the user to browse through results from thousands of social services such as Twitter, Facebook or Flickr. Although the technology is not perfect yet, the number of real-time search engines is growing. The article describes how real-time search is performed in comparison to traditional search procedures. It also highlights the strengths and weaknesses as well as challenges that this type of search is facing.