Twitter and Traditional Search Engines

Twitter has produced a hot new trend: real-time search. There is hardly a day that goes by within the Internet industry that real-time search is not mentioned. To feed this new hunger for real-time information, real-time search engines such as Twitter Search , Scoopler , Collecta , Topsy , CrowdEye , and more are popping up all around.
Unlike the traditional search engines, these real-time search engines return the most current information from the Web in the form of blog content and comments, Twitter messages, images and video, social services, news sources, and more.

Why does our society crave this continuous stream of information?

Collecta CEO Gerry Campbell told WebProNews that this need to publish and consume information actually goes back to ancient times. "If you go back all the way to the progression of cave paintings through monks copying Bibles to Gutenberg's press, we've seen an acceleration in the ability to publish information. In addition to that, we've seen an acceleration and a growth in people's ability to consume information. now, we're bringing together the ability for anybody to publish and for anybody to consume information." Despite all the perks of real-time search, the real-time search engines have their share of challenges to overcome. There are complaints that the results are not relevant and that they are filled with spam, among other things. While challenges are present, real-time search is still in the early stages and Google , Facebook , and users still express strong interest in the area.

Where do you think real-time search will lead us going forward? How will it impact the search industry?