It seems like forever ago that Pointcast introduced us to the first incarnation of so-called “push” technology. But aside from stock prices through online brokerages, the real-time streaming of content didn’t really take off until very recently. Even today, many people still refresh their browser to see if they’ve been outbid on eBay and reload the sports scores on their smartphone to see if their team held on for the win.
There are three key factors driving recent, rapid increases in the production and consumption of real-time data:
These developments are driving the proliferation of real-time content in a variety of consumer and enterprise applications. Here are six examples:
The folks at Pointcast didn’t anticipate that it would take 15 years for push to catch on, but it appears our “always on” culture is (finally!) ripe for real-time data. People are engaging with information and each other over the internet like never before, technological barriers are crumbling, and businesses have realized that customer experience is key to success in today’s market. The same way we have already forgotten life before cell phones and ATMs, engaging with ever more real time traffic will lead us to forget the early days of the internet when those same applications required constant searching and refreshing.