With the recent loss of Michael Jackson, we were able to witness not only the loss of a music icon (whether you loved or hated him is irrelevant), but also the impact and benefit of real time search capabilities.  Real time search is one of the strongest features of Twitter.

Ploked previously covered the aspect of Twitter being a search engine.  Not only is Twitter a search engine, it provides something that even Google or other search engines can not provide…real time results.  This was witnessed first hand when reports/rumors of Michael Jackson’s death began to surface.

Antiquated Search Results

Should you have tried to search Google, Yahoo or even Bing, you had little luck finding out what was going on.  Even if there were news outlets that confirmed his actual death, these old school search engines did not have the story indexed within their search results immediately.  Therefore the casual internet user may have had trouble finding confirmation of his death right after the report of his passing was confirmed at a media outlet. Read the rest of this entry »