As the real-time web becomes more of, well, a reality, industry experts and enthusiasts are begging the question, How quick is, now? But perhaps we should instead ask: How important is, now? How significant and relevant is, now – to me?

According to PostRank, the the half-life of a story on the Internet today is roughly 50 minutes. If you believe that to be true, the value of real-time is extremely important. The faster you get your content syndicated before the competition the better. Or, because distribution is moving more real-time, is it causing content to have a short shelf life? Newer content pushes older content out of view.

In a recent CNET post, Tom Krazit discusses the evolving nature of real-time search and in it, touches on some very key points to its counterpart – real-time publishing. When you create content to be distributed and syndicated, you design it with a purpose – even if it is just for entertainment or distraction with no particular audience in mind. Today’s SEO trackers and search engines pick it apart and dissect it to find an appropriate audience, distinguished by tastes, likes, dislikes, activities – a veritable content community.

The point in creating public content is to get it seen, correct?

Well more and more services are being created to make sure that happens – we built dlvr.it to help you customize your distribution while other services like Bing and OneRiot collect your content and present it front and center when a relevant real-time search query is made. In fact, the technology around this search is getting so good that they’re dissecting status updates as two individual search-significant pieces of information: the link shared and the actual message in the status. The link is filed into one relevant search bucket and the status, if it holds any weight, can be filed into another.

As you publish with tools like dlvr.it, your content isn’t just finding its own way to people who want to read it. Rather, the technology for selecting relevant content as it’s published is becoming more powerful as audiences continue to conduct real-time searches, but the tools that bring value and relevancy in real-time content flows are still in their early stages. For now, real-time web technology centers around the social, since human actions are what drive information at such instant and immediate frequency. Maybe one day it’ll be the other way around, but while real-time is powered by the socialized content, we can be sure that the relevancy will only continue to improve, refining the reach of your content, and defining your audience.

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