Looking back to the past 20 years on technology, one can easily notice a pendulum cycle that gets repeated at each stage. This post doesn’t intend to be a review on the history of web so to sum it up we could state that we always start with horizontal approaches and thus horizontal apps, and as long as users (mainly early adopters) use & spread a given app, new needs arise, which have to be addressed especifically. Basically it’s always from horizontal to vertical, take search engines evolution  for instance, or the evolution from websites to blogs, or the current development of social networks…from unspecialized to specialized ones. Take Twitter, a horizontal organic app. After the huge widespread (but still insufficient to be called a killer app adopted by non-techie mainstream, just like email or msn messaging did) of Twitter, 3rd-party solutions show up to tap Twitter stream for specific purposes.

Indeed, the pendulum and cronology has moved from asynchrony to synchrony, from plain html pages, forums, emails to messaging and chats. From asynchronous blogging to real-time blogging, i.e. Twitter.

I don’t actually agree with what Alexl Cohen says here:

« It’s something of a design truism that you can be decent at more things or great at a few things. Scarce resources, time and customers always force trade-offs. I like to think of “decent at more things” as a horizontal focus. Being “great at a few” would be a vertical focus ».

I understand his stance, though, somehow resounding the old saying « Jack of all trades, master of none »…But Twitter does more than a decent job being horizontal…or Flickr, or Google. In any case, vertical does help leverage and scale whatever that is you are using or searching in a more efficient way.

OK, back to the ‘now’ web, the real-time web, aka Twitter. As Jeff Pulver (@jeffpulver) claimed at the 140 Character Conference in NY, we are living at the state of now. And Twitter was just that now system we didn’t know we needed until we had it (paraphrasing from the t-shirt  Tim O’Reilly wore at that conference). Twitter is basically based upon, as defined by Jack Dorsey (Twitter co-founder), approachability, transparency and immediacy. Horizontal real-time web.

With Microplaza, we’re working towards that pendulum’s second phase: verticality. In this case verticality for the real-time now web. We aim to provide Twitter users the specialized tools and features to focus on specific topics, networks, conversations happening at Twitter, right now. It wasn’t really about coding a hot topic tracker from the public timeline as it was developing an application that would help you keep focused on what’s relevant for you and your trusted network (i.e. our personal timeline or our friends’), considering each passed link as the mother source (yeah, if content is king, then sure link relevance is queen).

Track and search your conversational network.

Search. Has this ever happened to you? When you need some help on a given issue, you have a doubt or whatever, and call someone but no one is available. You have to find your way to solve the problem. Then after a couple of hours or days, they call you back telling you they got a missed call, and ask you if they can help you.  Sorry, your question and your possible answer are not longer timely, nor fresh nor relevant.

Indeed. Search. We need the right data at the right time. And the right time is always now. We have present, future, past and now. Now is the right tense for search.

Indeed. Search. We need fresh data. Fresh not frozen (i.e. historical index or cached, which also come in handy but they’re not the same). But now can be integrated and complemented with fresh data from real-time web.

Indeed. Search. Relevant. What’s relevant for each of us.

Vertical zeitgeist, vertical real-time web is up for grabs and we think Microplaza can grab a piece …or rather, we think we’re cooking part of that recipe.

Related posts:

1. Media fears, Twitter and new models.
2. Microplaza Retweet Button
3. (English) Knowledge Plaza vs. Diigo: more than social web annotation