“Real Time”: Overhyped or Problem Solver?

There has been a lot of talk (hype? buzz?) in the investment and entrepreneur community around the concept of Real Time on the web this year. Twitter’s fast growth and its real time message stream certainly brought a spot light to this concept and fueled the excitement. Facebook is more and more focused on real time as well via their FriendFeed acquisition and even open sourced FF’s core Real Time web server technology.  There certainly seem to be more people with rose colored glasses than naysayers at this point based on my non scientific surveying (see links below).

As I meet startups and entrepreneurs in this space, I’m still trying to distinguish the signal from the noise around Real Time by defaulting to the fundamental question of “what specific customer problem are you solving with Real Time?”  This is usually quickly followed by, “how do you generate a lot of revenue by solving that problem?”  It feels like there are money making opportunities for investors and entrepreneurs alike around this trend but I’d like find a better answer to the first of these two basic questions.  I’m optimistic that there are pain points to be addressed (see below) and I’m less focused on the second question as historical business models can be brought to bear (e.g. targeted and contextual ads, data subscription services, freemium upsells) once traction (e.g. sustained usage and adoption) is achieved.  I do believe the customer problem statement around Real Time has yet to be clearly articulated.

For those interested in some background on the theories, theses and thoughts on what “Real Time” means, check out this sample of blog posts which I found useful (in no particular order)

1. ReadWriteWeb (higher level overview)
2. Anil Dash: (more technical description of underlying enabling technologies and where they are going)
3. John Borthwick at BetaWorks:  (positive summary and opinion on trends)
4. Nova Spivak - (positive summary and opinion on trends)
5. @vanelsas -  (negative opinion on trends)

From these links, these tidbits jumped out at me:  Dash warns, “And whenever we see something shiny and new, we have the temptation to use technology for technology’s sake, whether or not we’re solving a real problem or providing a real value.”  Borthwick predicts, “Over time tools will emerge to provide real context to these pile up’s.”  Spivak argues, “One of the most difficult challenges will be how to know what to pay attention to in the Stream.”

To me, these comments suggest that there is opportunity around Real Time but that the customer problem statement is still amorphous.   For sure, this is often the case with nascent markets and it is exciting to see potential solutions.  Here is my quick attempt to use examples to boil down the basic problem(s) that can be solved with Real Time today:

1. Help me make a decision:  Stock trading and defense intelligence are two obvious industries where Real Time decision making is critical. Professional hedge fund algorithms use real time data feeds from Bloomberg terminals and Thompson Reuters Estimates to successfully execute automated trades. Perhaps companies like StockTwits may become the next Bloomberg where they provide real time data and chatter to day traders or stock enthusiasts like me.  (Disclosure, StockTwits cofounder Howard Lindzon is an investor and board member with Trinity Ventures at TubeMogul where I am a board observer).
2. Help me stay in the know:  Breaking political news, sport scores, celebrity trends, disasters, the latest viral video/joke and next gen tech gadget rumors are all content types that are food to those who lust after being on the bleeding edge of “in the know”. I’m personally not in this camp but recognize that sizeable web publishing businesses and audiences have been built on tracking and reporting on these topics. I could see how each of these sites could benefit from the addition of a stream of Real Time content. For these sites though, Real Time becomes yet another feature as opposed to a core piece of functionality. Perhaps one of the dozen or so real time search engine startups will break through to own this feature and be the ubiquitous Real Time arms dealer to publishers.
3. Help me save money: This is something I haven’t seen enough of yet. As someone always on the hunt for a bargain and value, I’d love to see a Real Time stream that analyzes deals and offers related to products I’m shopping for at a given point in time.  I’d like to see real time alerts that ping me proactively when a Woot or Swoopo auction is about to expire so I can jump in if necessary.  Or ping me when the same item just gets listed on eBay or Craigslist.  I don’t want to sign up to each merchant’s alert mechanisms, rather, I’d prefer to have a centralized proactive feed that combs the thousands of merchant and listing sites out there for me in order to find the best deal at that point in time.  The closest thing I’ve seen to this in concept is ShopItToMe but albeit as a periodic email newsletter rather than a Real Time steam.

How about you?  What do you think is the sweet spot customer problem to be solved with Real Time?