The Web has evolved.  It used to be a place where people came to just search for simple information.  Now it’s a place where people come to also share information.  Information today that is multi-media and more complex.  Information today that is real-time and social – recommended by people who know, and people you know.  I refer to this new place as “The Living Web” and recently our team at LeapFish debuted the web’s new search engine made to navigate this new living web.  You can find the press release here :  LeapFish Unveils Real-Time Social Search Engine that Captures the Living Web

VIDEO: LeapFish - Living the Web

Although there are many ways to search and share information, the current experience is fragmented, ineffective, and ultimately inefficient.  On the search side, there are a growing number of disconnected sites for traditional search, niche interests, audio, video, imagery and more.  On the sharing side, there is a universe of segregated social networks, blogs, real-time content, multi-media portals and more.  This growing disconnection and segregation is the challenge that LeapFish has embraced.  By providing a single, connected, multi-media experience for both searching and sharing traditional and real-time content, the new web will be easier to find and easier to share.  Take a look at this video that sums up the challenge that the web and consumers face today.

VIDEO: LeapFish - How it Works

LeapFish benefits everyone online.  Existing portals and services will benefit from a new found search integration that offers them more user engagement and stage time.  Consumers will benefit with access to more of the information the new web has to offer, that was previously tucked away in pages 5, 6, etc of traditional engines.   But most of all, it benefits you the consumer, those living the web by searching and sharing the freshest, most relevant and most interesting content available anywhere.  Take a look at this video to learn more about how the new web is being brought in to one place with LeapFish.

You’ve evolved, the web has evolved, and LeapFish believes its time the search experience evolves too.

Here are four ways LeapFish has helped evolve search :

Real-Time Search Engine : A fresh multi-media real-time search engine capturing results from all containers of real-time content (e.g., Twitter,YouTube, Twitpic, Flickr).

Searching and Sharing : Easy and convenient sharing features empower users to merge traditional content into the social and real-time Web as they search and find content anywhere online (e.g., Facebook, Twitter, Digg).

Variety of the Web : Delivering rich multi-media content from the deep and wide new Web via integration of leading authorities in website aggregation, videos, images, news, blogs, tweets and much more on every search query (e.g., YouTube, CNN, Twitter).

Personal Internet Dashboard :  Technically advanced customizable personal homepage allowing consumers to build their own dashboard to the Internet by adding multiple news feeds, blogs, applications, tools and more (e.g., Facebook Application, Twitter Application, Mashable Feed)

If you don’t understand why the Real Time Web is huge, you will soon.

Thanks to micro-blogging sites like Twitter, a constant stream of human-posted content has infiltrated the Web. This growing infiltration has created a bottoms up approach to content creation that via the progressive support of rapidly developing applications has and will continue to empower every individual to co-create what is deemed as “important” on the Web. The Real Time Web serves as both the database that informs us of what is happening right “Now” and the human touch to the content that will compete with the traditional algorithms for what is deemed as “valuable” content to us all.

Its challenges lie in the filtration and mass integration of both the content and the act of sharing to the Real Time Web. There remain major aspects of the Web that have not yet integrated “searching” and “sharing” of the Real Time Web, including traditional search. But as filtration and integration progress the Web will take the form of a living breathing database.

Here are 5 reasons why Real Time Search will help the Real Time movement change the Web and your experience forever.

1. The “Now” Factor

We saw it with Michael Jackson’s passing. We saw it with the Iran Protests and we see it more and more everyday – the Real Time web provides us with what is happening right “Now” and with vivid detail from around the globe. “We” is driving the “Now” factor.

2. We Become Co-Creators

The Real-Time web offers us the ability to become co-creators in not only content but also in what is deemed important. Why? Because we decide what is worth sharing, discussing and having opinions on. This behavior serves as a natural selection of valuable content. Certainly the current web allows for creation of content, but what is deemed as important/valuable is mostly left up to a few individuals, organizations and a bunch of robots. The Real-Time web, once fully integrated, will change that.

3. Humans vs Machines

Have you ever clicked on blue links that lead you to a piece of content dating back to a year ago? Search results lose relevancy each day due to the amount of new content hitting the internet. Spiders, web crawlers and engines decide what content is relevant via algorithms and those results can be manipulated via intelligently structured content (SEO). Real-time search enables users to receive information via conversations and people instead of machines. Take a look at your web results today. Would you rather receive cold content determined by algorithms or what the crowd and people value as good and bad?

4. Facebook Factor

With over 300 million users creating and wrapping themselves around content, once Facebook opens up its search API to the web what do you think will happen? Better yet do you think there is value in being able to search a database of 300 million users’ opinions and experiences? Searching Facebook may be the factor that tips the overall experience of the web into one that is very different than today. Facebook may be the tipping point to where bottoms up (sharing & contributing) will go head to head with tops down (crawling & optimizing).

5. A New Breed of Search Engines

If there existed a search engine that was capable of aggregating and rendering results based on what was shared, peoples opinions and conversations, would you be interested in that search engine? If you knew that there were 6 conversations that provided a fantastic account of a design firm you were considering would that be more valuable to you than the top 3 links on your current search engine results? Would you have more value for SEO based search results or human conversation driven results? How about both? Real-Time search, once developed, will render a new breed of search engines that will capture this new value the New Web has to offer.

At the moment, Real Time Search is only in its infancy, as is the Real Time web. Twitter and the like are simply representations of a big movement that will continue to occur with the creation of more similar services, more adoption of those services and more integration of those services.

What is clear is that our daily use of the Real Time Web’s driving platforms — Twitter, Facebook and the like — is unprecedented. The Internet is no longer simply just a disconnected 3^rd party container of tops down aggregation, “We” is now part of its determination. And, search as we know it will soon change to accommodate, thereby delivering a completely different experience of the Web.

Recently there have been big uproars regarding the growing lack of responsiblity of some blogs and the mob attacks that are set to follow their posts.  For some peculiar reason some bloggers seem to believe they can post whatever they want to, running around like cowboys from the wild wild west shooting from the hip damaging companies left and right.  Here are some recent examples of the community backlash regarding  the “journalism” and “responsibility” that lack today.

TechCrunch Rumor Control Failure Brings Out the Torches

http://www.blogherald.com/2009/02/24/techcrunch-rumor-control-failure-brings-out-the-torches/

Journalism, or irresponsible rumour-mongering?

http://www.mathewingram.com/work/2009/02/23/journalism-or-irresponsible-rumour-mongering/

LeapFish Gets Second Lashing, Beginning to Think TechCrunch Just Doesn’t Like Us

http://benbehrouzi.org/2009/02/04/leapfish-gets-second-lashing-from-techcrunc/

The Mobosphere, Web 2.0’s Ugly Side and Top 10 Personas

http://www.fasttech.com/2009/02/blogosphere-attacks-top-ten-mobosphere-personas/