Why is real time so real time right now?

Real time. Why is this topic such a "new" and "fascinating" topic when it has been around forever? By no means do I mean Twitter or social media has been around since the Stone Age, but doing things in the fastest manor or in "real time" has always been what makes competition, well, competition.

Within David Meerman Scott's book "Real-Time Marketing & PR," he highlights a few interesting topics for thought. In the first chapter of his book, he references Dave Carroll's fight against United Airlines and how real time actions influenced its pursuing events. I must ask though, why is this such a shock to our society, not about the story, but rather about how quickly it escalated? At that point when he posted the video, we as a society had already taken a giant step into technology growth that almost every single person had access at any given time to whatever their heart desired. What I am so shocked about is why it took that long for a Dave Carroll type incident to be as public as it was. 

On page 9 of Scott's book, he mentioned the phrase "World Wide Rave" and describes such as "an online chain reaction that takes off when people spread your ideas by repeating your story." Here is where my thought comes in, if one were to take away the online part, is that not the goal of all businesses or stories? Throughout our whole lives, we were trained that whoever is first place gets a better prize then the person who is in second place and so on. Thus meaning there is no need to coin events as a "World Wide Rave" rather just a part of life that happens with or without internet. I am sure if we were to do a controlled test where we told an outstanding secret to multiple fifth graders, the result would be whoever took that RISK of sharing the secret FIRST would most likely GAIN the advantage of now being popular. There was no need of internet, no need of technology, rather a different real time example that proves we seem to forget that real time has been around forever. Now I get it, Scott is trying to focus on online reasons but what I have drawn from these first two chapters of his book is that we should not be so shocked or overwhelmed by real time progressions, or at least to this point.  

I can confidently make the following assumption right now that in X-amount of years when technology becomes even more advanced, real time will still be apart of our society and another Dave Carroll story will appear. The only difference this time is that all the bloggers and whomever will be just as "shocked" about how real time made that story even more special than ever before.  

I did enjoy how the within those chapters David referenced and elaborated on such topics like David Carroll, Googleplex's switch to real time, TMZ, Politico, and more. My only thoughts though is if we were looking back 10, 15, 20 years ago, I feel like even back then we saw companies who used the available real time component to succeed. The stories may have changed topic wise, but all that is different between then and now is the availability of real time. 

Until next time,

Matt