Baynote

Over the last several months, it seems we can’t go a day without a cover story on the real-time Web.  Marshall Kirkpatrick of ReadWriteWeb just published the first of what will likely be many more lengthy reports on the topic. Mashable’s Pete Cashmore has predicted that the real-time Web will be one of the driving forces of 2010, paving the way for real-time news, search, collaboration, reviews and more.  And Erica Naone of the MIT Technology Review wrote a fascinating story last week on how the real-time Web goes far beyond Twitter and other microblog sites we typically associate with the trend.

The excitement reached a fever pitch on Dec. 7 when Google announced it would begin displaying real-time results in its searches.

It’s an electrifying time to be a part of the Web to say the least, and it’s nice to see real-time at the forefront of conversation in the media and at industry events I’m attending.

Given that Baynote is focused on mining real-time implicit behavior on the Web, I’ve been asked lately on numerous occasions what my perspective on the real-time Web is.  Rob Hof, previously of BusinessWeek, also recognized our leadership in real-time back in August, when he featured Baynote as fifth on the list of real-time Web start-ups, behind the likes of Twitter, Facebook and Aardvark.

My take? I believe we are on the cusp of a brand new Web, one that will be driven by the power to tap into both real-time explicit and implicit intelligence, as well as the Collective Intelligence of all Internet users. Although much of the recent excitement about the real-time Web has been focused on gathering and making sense of explicit feedback captured in published sources, such as Twitter, you cannot possibly observe the Web merely by looking at it or reading it. Further, ninety-nine percent of what happens on the Web is never written, never rated, never reviewed. It’s told through implicit behaviors in the form of mouse patterns, clicks and hovers to name a few. It’s told through intent.

In the real-time Web, you can’t just watch what people say, you have to watch what they do.

At Baynote, we are focused on the business use cases of real-time, providing companies with the tools to tap into the implicit behaviors of customers on their sites, and learn, adapt and take action automatically. This Collective Intelligence is reflective of the silent majority, not the loud minority. It is free of bias, and requires no manual processing or analysis.

As the fever pitch for real-time continues to grow, we look forward to helping companies become smarter, more personalized, real-time businesses on the much longer road to actualizing a truly real-time Web. We will continue to watch this trend carefully and plan to write more about the real-time Web for business here in 2010.

Stay tuned for more insight.