Google has taken the next step towards real-time search results by signing deals with MySpace and Facebook to include publicly available status updates in its search index. Google recently signed a similar agreement with Twitter. According to a Google spokesperson, the partnerships will go live on Google across all English language domains (both .com and .co.uk) “over the coming days.”

When a Google user runs a search on a particular topic, they will now receive real-time updates from the three social media sites as well as the usual list of search results – a development the business community would do well to take on board. Search engine optimization efforts will now need to include a social media presence if businesses are to succeed in putting their brands at the top of the Google search results for relevant search terms.

In a recent interview with The Telegraph, Tom Stocky, Google’s director of product management said: “People want the most up-to-date information and that’s what services such as Twitter have provided a great platform for – which is why we are really happy to work with them and gain access to that information so we can deeply embed it into our search system.”

Stocky emphasized the importance of speed to Google search: “Search speed means two things: one – how quickly results come back to you and two – how quickly we can update the information. Adding real-time results to our product will massively help with the latter part of this definition. We have to make our results as fresh and relevant as possible.”

Bing is also taking steps towards real-time search results. It is currently running a separate site which integrates ‘tweets’, although it has yet to integrate Twitter updates into its main search. The company is also working on a similar dedicated site for Facebook updates.

Google and Twitter have announced a partnership which will give Google access to the full feed of every user’s “tweets”. The move is the strongest indication yet that the search engines are moving towards real-time search results.

Google has already been pipped to the post by new search engine Bing, which has already made Bing Twitter Search available in the US and has signed a deal with Facebook to add public Facebook updates to its search results.

Probably the best explanation for why real-time data has become so important to the search engines comes from Erick Schonfeld of TechCrunch. Here’s what he had to say on the topic: “Tweets and other real-time data streams are valuable to Google and Bing because for many types of searches (news, events, sports, stocks, shopping, etc.), the most recent information is often the most relevant.

“And it’s hard to beat millions of people Tweeting out their thoughts … for real-time information about every subject imaginable. Google and Bing need access to this stream of data if they want to keep their results fresh and relevant.”

Google, of course, has already taken a couple of steps towards real-time search. Users performing Google searches can now filter their results to display only pages posted within a specific time-frame – even as recently as the previous seven days. They can also choose to search only blog results as opposed to all web results.

The shift towards real-time search has fairly obvious repercussions for the digital marketing and SEO industries. If a business wants a presence in the search results it needs to make sure it is adding regular content both to its own website and to social media platforms. Static web pages could soon be displayed so far down the search results as to be virtually invisible ….

One of our nagging worries, as we steam ahead into the Internet age, is what’s going to happen to the humble book. Will the printed page finally give way to the flickering screen? Will authors even bother to get their work published, or will they just upload it for anyone to read?

It looked this question would be answered by websites like Project Gutenberg and scribd.com, which offer thousands of complete texts, at no cost to the reader, and pose a grave threat to publishers and booksellers alike. At first it seemed that the battle would be between the website and the paperback, but companies like Amazon have recently entered the field, with electronic reading devices that promise to do for literature what the iPod did for music.

Following the recent success of Amazon’s Kindle electronic reading device, introduced in 2007, Barnes & Noble has sought to carve out its own corner of the market, with an eBookstore offering electronic books for a variety of platforms, including Apple’s iPhone, the Blackberry Smartphone, and most Windows and Mac computers.

Barnes & Noble’s greatest coup, however, is that it is the exclusive provider of eBooks for Plastic Logic’s forthcoming (and much anticipated) E-reader device. The device, scheduled for general release in 2010, will take the battle to a whole new level. “We want to replace paper,” says Steven Glass, Plastic Logic’s head of user experience, and the impossibly sleek device, weighing in at a mere 13 ounces, and capable of storing thousands of documents for reading and annotating, seems a more-than-worthy successor.

And the electronic media is no longer sounding a death knell for traditional publishers. As the New York Times recently remarked, print and delivery can consume as much as 65% of a newspaper’s budget - so switching to electronic options is likely to give many publications a new lease of life. So it’s high time we stopped mourning the death of the book - and started to celebrate its reincarnation.

New research published by Ofcom today predicts that 75% of UK households will be online by the end 2009.
Currently, 70% of UK adults have internet access at home: the remaining 30% fall into two main groups – the self-excluded and the financially-excluded.

Self-excluded people tend to be older, retired, adults – indeed, 61% of this group said they have never used a computer. Among the financially-excluded were a section of adults (30%) who said the internet was too expensive. 27% of respondents in the financially-excluded group said the cost of a computer was their main reason for not having internet at home. In addition, concern about not being able to afford monthly internet payments was cited as a factor that prevented some respondents from having internet access at home.

The 5% of UK adults who intend to get the internet in the next six months are more likely to be younger and working, use the internet already outside of the home and have children.

The main reasons cited for getting internet access were to source information (36%) followed by social networking (26%), keeping up with technology (25%) and because friends and family recommended it (25%).

Today’s findings will soon be followed up by the Government’s forthcoming Digital Britain report, which will explore the concept of universal broadband access. Ofcom’s Partner for Strategy and Market Development, Peter Phillips, said: “Broadband is becoming increasingly important to peoples’ ability to participate in the economy and society.

“The research shows some genuine opportunities for policy makers wishing to drive take up of internet services. But it also shows that some creativity will be required if we wish to capture the imaginations of those who have yet to engage with the benefits the internet may bring.”

Will the e-reader become to books what the iPod is to CDs? The bookshop Borders has rolled out its new ebook service in the UK and Amazon has released a supersize version of its Kindle DX e-reader, just three months after the original release. The new larger Kindle has a 9.7 inch screen and can store up to 3,500 books.

Borders, which has more than 1,000 stores around the world, said it had been waiting until enough digital content was available to launch its ebook service in the UK. (The service has already been established in America.) Meanwhile, the British Library is coming close to the end of a two year project to digitise more than 100,000 books from the 19th Century.

Films, TV and music can all be downloaded online and watched on portable devices, so it’s logical that books should follow. The difference, however, is that people enjoy browsing in bookshops. The iPod may have killed the CD, but it seems unlikely the printed book will suffer the same fate at the hands of the e-reader. Julie Howkins from Borders told BBC News today that “Publishers are beginning to take notice [of ebooks] but I don’t think we have reached the music iPod moment for books at all. You would never get the same experience browsing through the shelves and being able to see books that you didn’t know existed. I can’t see Borders being a huge bank of computers, that’s not the way it’s going to go.”

That said, internet giant Google is about to make its foray into the e-book market with Google Book Search, a project that will dwarf the British Library’s efforts. The firm is currently in negotiations with the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers to obtain a court agreement to allow Google to scan books that may still be in copyright.

At the moment, the printed word has a substantial cost advantage over the ebook: not only do e-readers cost several hundred pounds; the ebooks themselves can often be more expensive than their paper equivalents. Nevertheless, when prices come down and ebook content becomes widely available, we may yet witness the decline of the printed word.