CIO CORNER

As we start making the transition from Web 2.0 to Web 3.0, I can’t help but notice the hype around real-time web. Everyone from the VCs to the end-users are going gaga over it and money is being poured in, but no one really knows what the outcome will be and whether real-time data ‘really’ impacts our lives (i.e consumers).

The  joke in the entrepreneurial corridors today is that if you have a business idea make sure you end the mission statement with “in real-time” , then use the word at-least 50 times in the business plan and you’ll get funded!

Several funds and investors (prominent among them – Ron Conway and John Borthwick) are focusing on real-time startups. $23.27 million has been invested into pure twitter based startups and many more millions are being invested in other real-time startups. The  recent acquisition of Friendfeed by Facebook and Summize by Twitter has fueled more interest in this area. Even companies like Google and Microsoft are feeling the pressure and are improving their search engines to index data quickly while many of the smaller real-time startups hope to get bought out.

However, the question is whether real-time data “really” makes a difference in anyone’s lives. Shouldn’t startups focus on On-Demand web instead?

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