While Microsoft, Google and Yahoo have just begun to tap into the realtime web, a few startups, such as OneRiot and Collecta, have been innovating around realtime search for some time. Today, Collecta is launching a widget builder to help spread its realtime search results around the web.

Users can easily create a widget by entering the desired search terms in Collecta’s widget creator. You can then grab the code and embed it on any site or blog. The widget will provide realtime streaming content on the search terms, collecting content from a network of more than 10 million social media and news sites, including Twitter, WordPress, Flickr, The Associated Press, CNN, Reuters, and more. Collecta also allows users to customize the header, control the scroll rate, and link to an external style sheet to integrate the widget with their website’s look and feel.

Collecta is already using its widget technology to power realtime results for MySpace’s breaking news page focused on Haiti. MySpace and Collecta recently partnered to launch a realtime search platform using the MySpace real-time stream API to indexes the collection of public comments, photos, links, and videos that are shared throughout the social network.

The widget offering is compelling and should certainly help the search engine extend the reach of its technology and results. Of course, some of the results aren’t necessarily relevant but that seems to be the only downside. Twitter also offers its own realtime search widget, that continuously updates with new results from the query you set.

Collecta.com’s standalone search engine aggregates content from Twitter,MySpace, news sites, blogs and more and lets you share the content on Facebook, Stumbleopen, Delicious and other social media sites. Launched last June, Collecta has raised $1.85 million in funding from True Ventures and Campbell were the investors. The company was co-founded by Jack Moffitt, Brian Zisk, and Patrick Mahoney.

Crunchbase

• COLLECTA

Company: Collecta

Website: collecta.com

Funding: $6.58M

Collecta monitors the update streams of popular realtime blogs and sites like Twitter, Wordpress, and Flickr, and shows results as they happen. Results can be filtered by status updates, comments, stories, or photos. The entire engine is built around the XMPP standard, which pushes out data on a continual basis, so that for every search you end up watching a stream that keeps updating itself.

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