MySpace Jumps Into Google's Real Time Stream

Google just added another content boost to its stream of real-time information: it now features MySpace updates, which will start appearing both on Google’s main search results page and under the ‘Updates’ filter in the advanced search bar. The move was actually announced back at Google’s search event in December, which featured the debut of Google’s real-time search results, and is going live today. MySpace says that it sees around 1 billion status updates a month, which is about on par with what Twitter currently gets according to a recent Pingdom report.

Rather than launching a site dedicated to real-time search results, Google incorporates a constantly updating real-time feed into its main results page as a small widget nestled between the standard static links. Other partners providing real-time results include Twitter, which like MySpace, is sharing its full stream with Google. Facebook has also agreed to share some of its content in the future (integration with Google hasn’t launched yet), but it will only be sharing updates from companies, celebrities, and groups with Facebook Pages — not updates from the site’s 400 million users.

MySpace’s push towards openness and real-time has been one of the only bright spots for the site in the last year. The company recently fired CEO Owen Van Natta only nine months after a hiring him. And despite an executive overhaul last spring we haven’t seen many changes to the site’s core functionality, which badly needs to change if MySpace is going to reverse its downwards spiral.