RSSMicro trending topics is a service that has been available to users since 2006. Here we compare RSSMicro trending topics to other providers in a little bit more details:

Google Trends, Twitter Trending Topics, Yahoo Buzz, and Bing xRank are popular sites that provide information on top search keywords and hot topics. Among those Twitter proved to be particularly significant in terms of providing trending topics in real-time.

Google Trends:
http://www.google.com/trends

Twitter Trending Topics:
http://search.twitter.com/

Yahoo Buzz:
http://buzz.yahoo.com/

Bing xRank:
http://www.bing.com/xrank/

Despite various data analysis performed on those sites, one major algorithm seems dominant and that is the fact that the basis of trending topics among all of them is their site users' activities including search traffic. The accuracy of such algorithm is tight to the rate and volume in which those search activities occur. Obviously the search volume on Twitter or Google is big enough to support accurate results.

A closer look at trending topics on Twitter and Google reveals one important aspect of their functionality, trending topics are provided as they occur and seems they make little interference in identifying those keywords. Below you will find some of the keywords exactly as they were found on Google Trends and Twitter Trending Topics websites:

Google Trends	Twitter Trending Topics
chicago bears 2010 schedule	Re-Tweet This If
i believe i can fly lyrics	Eleven
doorman strike nyc 2010	Woo-hoo
what is 420 day	RESPECT IS EARNED
gang starr guru dead	Google Escalates The
marvel vs capcom 3	AYOOOOO RT
dirty thunderstorm	Kylie
sly stone	Eeeh
Timothy mcveigh execution video	Parliament
april 19th in history	Apple Wants Its
high stakes poker season 6 episode 10	I Hate My Face

Thinking about trending keywords on Twitter, it is obvious those listed above (which appear very often on Twitter) do not have any particular meaning or point to any specific content or story. The algorithm behind Twitter Trending Topics in many cases is a total failure; those keywords may point to some specific content or stories on Twitter but are less likely to be applicable to the entire web as a real-time hot topic. They seem to be generated based on the way people interact with Twitter and consume its services. In fact, considering the volume of traffic and search on Twitter, those topics should represent a tiny portion of the content on Twitter. Surprisingly, our estimates show half of Twitter trending topics either are irrelevant or not representing a hot topic at all. For a social networking site like Twitter those results are disappointing and provide little useful information that could be applicable to the entire web.

Despite the lack of relevancy on Twitter Trending Topics, Google seems to provide better results; many trending topics provided by Google are in fact related to either popular stories or current events as they happen and most importantly the topics can be traced back to the web as a hot topic and not necessarily a hot topic that solely works on Google.

Looking closely into Google Trends and the way trending topics are generated, one thing is striking and that is when you realize the volume of the search on the site and how relevant these keywords are comparing to its size and traffic. The Google trending topics listed above are selected particularly to show how users can manipulate Google quickly so that it displays trending topics that are in fact very specific to a certain group of people. Google Trends like other trending topics providers are limited to how people interact with their services regardless of their size or traffic.

In fact, the big difference in trending topics between various providers shows the dependency of those site to their own users and how users interact differently from site to site. A trending system that does not rely on users activities but make calculations based on availability of the content generates more consistence results. RSSMicro Trending gives more priority to content publishers rather than users.

Also graphs on various trending topics on Google in most cases show a short life cycle, they pick up in popularity and die quickly, create a doubtful scenario in which question the reliability of the topic in the first place. RSSMicro trending topics have a longer life cycle, they may stay around for a while giving the user the notion that those topics in fact have a better and much reliable source backing them up.

The idea of decentralizing the web is the main focus of many new services that currently running on the web, they tend to stay longer and more likely to be implemented globally. Trending topics and keywords in real-time web is no exception they should have basis that applies to the entire web not a specific site or group of users. Trending topics on Google, Twitter, Yahoo, and Live are all  site specific, represent their users activities and how they consume, interact with, or use their services, while the focus of trending topics on RSSMicro has roots on the availability of the content in real-time and gives more priority to content publishers rather than users, generate more consistent results.

RSSMicro offers two different set of hot topics: trending topics and popular topics and they are identified using an algorithm developed by RSSMicro team. RSSMicro breaking news, which has basis in its trending topics, can identify topics that are growing in popularity not because of users activities but the fact that more relevant content is being available in real-time.

You can enjoy RSSMicro popular topics and trending topic on RSSMicro news or FeedCamp.com:

RSSMicro Trending Topics and News:
http://www.rssmicro.com/news.web

FeedCamp:
http://www.feedcamp.com

Last month some important news came out which were related to feeds, real-time web publishing and indexing. The first news was about a controversial patent that was awarded to Facebook for “Dynamically providing a news feed about a user of a social network”. The patent is huge for many reasons, but most importantly signifies the role of feed as the preferred publishing method on social networks and once again shows how feed is turning into the very fabrics of the web and how businesses are rushing to have more footprints on this very fabric.

In terms of real-time data distribution, PubSubHubBub protocol is now more streamlined with Wordpress and Google itself and more likely others will join this frenzy by implementing PSHB hubs. It seems likely that this trend will change the web and how we publish and consume the data, and as far as apps running on the web, feed will play an increasingly important role for us.

And finally it seems likely that publishers, subscribers, apps, search engines will work more off of RSS and Atom feeds rather than HTML pages and our mission is more demanding and critical at the time while providing a mechanism for ranking RSS and Atom feeds.


Links:

Facebook News Feed Patent:
http://www.allfacebook.com/2010/02/facebook-feed-patent/

Wordpress PubSubHubBub Support:
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/pubsubhubbub/

Google Real-Time Indexing:
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/google_developing_real_time_index.php

FeedRank role in real-time search
It has been over 3 years since RSSMicro started to analyze the content published on RSS feeds, our primary goal was to identify top publishers and measure the quality of the content as well as their update frequency. The significance of working with RSS or Atom feeds is the access to the most fresh content on the web with some acceptable latency. Today the same concept is being adopted by Google and others to distribute real-time data on the web using RSS and Atom feeds available on content publishers.

RSSMicro quickly took advantage of PubSubHubBub and rssCloud protocols and merged the existing ranking system it developed over the years known as FeedRank with real-time data by implementing these two real-time protocols on millions of RSS and Atom feeds already in its index. The result was significant and promising, for the first time RSSMicro achieved a high level of relevancy on real-time data published on RSS feeds.

FeedRank which is the RSSMicro technology behind ranking RSS and Atom feeds is now taking real-time data to a new level offering a solution to the noisy and irrelevant content published in real-time.

Twitter and Real-Time Protocols
Twitter is known as the leader of the real-time search, it has real-time distribution deals with Google and Microsoft. So many other companies like OneRiot basically follow Twitter to create their own real-time search engines. Unlike others RSSMicro offers a global solution which does not only rely on one or two sources and instead follows the recent developments in real-time technologies and solutions first offered by Google. RSSMicro offers relevant and rich content along images and videos as they are being published in real-time. Currently identified many Twitter and FriendFeeds accounts, news publishers, blogs and many other sources on millions of RSS feeds which have been closely monitored over the years. In theory, any system which relies on real-time protocols should surpass Twitter in volume and FeedRank will be able to help to add relevancy and accuracy to the equation. The trend in which people implement these protocols is going up as we see this on WordPress and some other blog platforms and here we need to scale up the FeedRank processes so that we can follow the growth we anticipate in the near future.

Twitter: Real-Time Content vs Public Opinion
As we see the growing trend in using real-time data distribution technologies by many news publishers, blog platforms and businesses, one question remains unanswered and that is what would be the role of Twitter in maybe 2 or 3 years from now?

Twitter is a 140 characters messaging service which has limitation in posting images, videos, HTML content and more, it seems likely that if people stay loyal and use Twitter and enjoy tweeting about their status and some other stories that find interesting, Twitter will become the source of public opinions and trends on the web rather than real-time content unless it takes a sharp turn and re-defines its messaging and posting service and creates a full-featured content publishing tool, at that point it would be more like another blog or messaging platform that compete with other tools already available on the market. However the role of being the source of public opinions and trends will remain the greatest asset of Twitter as millions of loyal users tweet on regular basis about current events and stories.

Find featured RSS feeds on RSSMicro here:
http://www.rssmicro.com/featured_rss_feeds.web

FeedRank on Twitter:
http://twitter.com/FeedRank

About FeedRank:
http://www.rssmicro.com/FeedRank.web


FeedRank Team.

One of my friends pointed out to the recent news from OneRiot, saying that their business is gaining ground and that they are becoming a big player in real-time search market, here is the original news on TechCrunch:

http://techcrunch.com/2010/02/18/oneriots-new-realtime-search-api-served-up-with-a-side-of-revenue/

Here are some thoughts on this story:

It may seem strange to some people but I do not see any momentum on the OneRiot side, 97% of their search (momentum) coming from API, and here is the problem: free API search alone is not a good indication of a healthy business model, OneRiot is making high volume free API search calls as the last resort because:

• Consumers don't see much value to their search comparing to Twitter search results.
  

• OneRiot traffic for the past 6 months is downward, despite a good coverage by TechCrunch and venture funding.

• Lack of innovation, sticking to very limited sources, I am assuming 90% are Tweets, 8% are Diggs, 2% other posts, no real-time protocols available for Twitter and many more...
  

• Businesses use free API when they see lack of consumer demand for their product in an attempt to win some traffic and some market share. OneRiot lack of consumer demand shows that they are basically an unsuccessful business model using the last shot in an attempt to make their product appealing to some market leaders. A successful business first creates a unique and competitive product, builds solid consumer demand on top of it and as the demand goes up and to address the exponential growth creates the API for the partners not VISE VERSA.
  

OneRiot is mostly a duplicate work of Twitter trying to pretend a large/important real-time player ready to be bought. Frankly, I do not see OneRiot (as its current state) to be a real-time search engine. Their real-time search functionality is Twitter based without any chance to expose recent developments in real-time search technology simply because Twitter doesn't support PubSubHubBub or rssCloud protocols. Despite all that RSSMicro is a working example of recent developments in real-time search first introduced by Google and other marker leaders using PubSubHubBub and rssCloud, RSSMicro opens completely new possibilities to a decentralized real-time search, showcasing relevancy and accuracy of the search results by using its proprietary FeedRank algorithm.


Cheers!

All RSSMicro internal feeds are PubSubHubBub enabled, subscribers can take advantage of RSSMicro hub and receive RSSMicro feed updates in real-time. Checking the server logs we have noticed a relatively new PubSubHubBub subscription service started at https://pshb-service.appspot.com/ we couldn't find any information on the web regarding the nature or the source of this new service, however we have all the reasons to believe that this is in fact Google subscription service to PubSubHubBub enabled feeds. The service has implemented HTTPS protocol using Hub.secret parameter for secure server to server connection.

RSSMicro hub has been able to verify all the secure subscription requests coming from the source and pushing content to the subscriber's address above.

I will update this post once I find more information about this particular subscriber.

Google announced a new feature on Google Reader, this time website owners without a feed can use Google to generate a feed for their sites. They can add the feed to the site and let users enjoy updates by subscribing to the feed. This work can be done in a couple of minutes.

http://googlereader.blogspot.com/2010/01/follow-changes-to-any-website.html

It is important to note that the significance of this work is not the reader ability to notify you with the site updates but is the ability to create a feed using Google infrastructure. The feed can be added to the site and being updated outside of Google reader. You can see a sample Google generated feed for a site without a feed here:

http://www.google.com/notificationservice/webchanges/webfeeds/1451785850960242912

This would expand FeedRank to potentially all content on the web. More and more content would be FeedRank enabled as feed become the standard mechanism for distributing site updates on the web. In other words, if someone wants to deal with updates on the web they better use a feed. This has a huge impact on the web as we know it.

For real-time search players this could also be a turning point, feed will have the most recent updates on any website and it is the best candidate for real-time search engines, there is no better mechanism that can support real-time data distribution while keeping the decentralized nature of the web.
 
This means more work for us to do here in RSSMicro, and if RSSMicro can show how FeedRank works on 4 Million feeds, it sure can do it for 400 Million feeds and more.


Cheers!

The real-time data distribution and search has come to a new frontier in RSSMicro, for the first time it introduces real-time image search and real-time video search along real-time search in articles and posts. All search capabilities will soon be available through an API for all search partners.

On RSSMicro revamped home page users will be able to search for images and videos as they are being published or distributed on millions of RSS feeds. This creates a tremendous opportunity for news editors, bloggers and consumers to search and find relevant images and videos pertaining to current news and events.

You can search RSSMicro for real-time images using the sample link below:
http://www.rssmicro.com/?q=Haiti&f=1

Real-time video search on RSSMicro:
http://www.rssmicro.com/?q=Haiti&f=2


You can send your comments to info[at]rssmicro.com

RSSMicro is happy to announce its PubSubHub server at: http://pubsubhub.rssmicro.com

RSSMicro real-time PubSubHub along FeedRank technology brings RSSMicro to the forefront spot in real-time data delivery and search systems with the most relevant content available in its index.

Feel free to ping the hub if you are a publisher or subscribe to get the most relevant content in real-time.

More about PubSubHub protocol here.

Today RSSMicro completes the integration of rssCloud and PubSubHubBub two real-time data distribution protocols into its proprietary ranking system for RSS and Atom feeds.

RSSMicro is the leading RSS feed search engine, since 2006 it has been working on RSS feed discovery as well as ranking and indexing millions of feeds in its database using FeedRank algorithm. Today by integrating two leading real-time data distribution protocols it has achieved a milestone in indexing relevant information in real-time. RSSMicro API partners as well as individuals can enjoy relevant articles, images and videos in real-time. For API information contact RSSMicro at info[at]rssmicro.com

Follow real-time news on Obama here:
http://www.rssmicro.com/search/Obama

Follow RSSMicro on Twitter:
http://twitter.com/RSSMicro

Came across this article:

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/cliqset_activity_streams_api.php

Here are some thoughts:

ActivityStream extension to RSS and Atom format (mistakenly referred to as a format in the article) and the notion behind standardizing or normalizing "activities" is a good idea however there are two important things to think about:
 
1- How much interest is there for every single activity on social networks? people sometimes show little interest in the post itself yet how they might be interested in a feed entry for adding an image, a feed entry for changing background color, a feed entry probably for adding new friend. The real-time search is already saturated with content that adding all these data to the stream doesn't make sense, at least for now. These type of activities can be used for some customized end user applications that serve a special purpose not real-time search to my view. I can think of a celebrity that is also active across multiple social networks (which is very rare), and people want to know every single activity from him or her in real-time (still very rare).
 
2- Data formats have already been standardized, that was their point in the article (super highway coast to coast), the standard format is Atom or RSS. Other data can be attached as an extension (a new namespace) to these two formats to make it richer. This has been happening since the creation of RSS and Atom. What Cliqset is doing is a repetitive action by duplicating feeds that already carry ActivityStream extension in their feeds (if there is any). Those social networks who have such API for activities and willing to make it public already have ActivityStream attached to their feeds, not sure what the purpose of Cliqset is in here and what value it brings to the table.
 
 
Bottom line, some of these ideas come from lack of understanding of the existing technologies, maybe it is just the author.

Now the question is which format is more capable to adopt new extensions, to my view it is the RSS that is even richer than Atom, RSS feeds can add Atom namespace and use its elements while Atom feeds can't use RSS elements as a namespace because RSS deosn't have a namespace.