There is a great deal of risk in real-time news. If you search for a term many people are searching for, there is a big spam problem. Twitter has done little t

There is a great deal of risk in real-time news. If you search for a term many people are searching for, there is a big spam problem. Twitter has done little to nothing to fight this spam problem. You could say the same for any of their spam problems - they have quite a few. That said, I think many big names are being _extremely_ naive in calling the innovation "real time". It is open, social, and public. There is actually no real-time UX in twitter.com - the closest is "N new results" popup on a search page, requiring a click. I have no idea why election.twitter.com hasn't been incorporated into search. Actually, I have a very good idea why they take so long to do *, but I digress. The point is that it doesn't matter. There is little to no appreciable difference between real-time and 15 seconds lagged for tweets.