Google launched real-time search

Google launched real-time search, bringing live updates from Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and more into a scrolling pane in your Google search results.

Why real-time?

What’s driving this real-time trend anyway? In large part, lowered barriers to web content creation: Posting a 140-character update to Twitter is so effortless that Web users are becoming conditioned to create.

They’ve learned to expect a response, too: The immediate feedback provided by Facebook comments and Twitter replies is an incentive to make continued contributions.

But the real answer may be in our heads. These technologies are literally addictive, says psychologist Susan Weinschenk, fueling a “dopamine-induced loop” of seeking behavior and instantaneous reward.

New email! Unread Tweets! New comment on your blog post! Each new alert is like Pavlov ringing a bell.

Real-time search

If this new paradigm stimulates our seeking behavior, it follows that search is central to the real-time Web. Before Google entered the fray, OneRiot and Collecta stood out among real-time search engines.

The reigning champion of real-time search, however, is Twitter Search, which provides instant updates whenever new Tweets are posted. “108 more results since you started searching. Refresh to see them,” implores a message below the search box. Enter the topic du jour here and you’ll no doubt find yourself in one of Weinschenk’s dopamine-induced loops.

This thirst for the new and novel is by no means limited to search, however: It looks set to pervade the entire Web in 2010. Let’s look at a few more examples.

Real-time…everything!

This trend is too nebulous to capture its every facet. Suffice to say, a vast array of Web sites and applications will try to capitalize on the real-time Web in 2010, serving our need to be engaged in the moment. Serving, perhaps, but never quite satisfying.

“Do you ever feel like you are addicted to email or Twitter or texting,” Weinschenk asks.

Of course you are. We all are … and soon we’ll be addicted to a whole lot more.

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