It was inevitable, and now it’s here, Google has just launched real-time search integrated into search results pages. The new feature updates a real time results module as it discovers new real time results from around the Web — for example, live tweets, Yahoo Answers, news articles and Web pages now stream in on the actual result pages for your query.  Google has signed deals with Twitter, Facebook, Myspace and others that integrates these third party platforms to pull in data in real-time.

By Google taking the plunge and integrating data APIs from third party platforms, it definitely validates the emerging new era of a connected Web of platforms.  A decade ago, the Web was mostly comprised of a presentational layer of static html pages.  Then we saw an explosion of web application development that took these static pages and made them a lot more interactive and dynamic. While these web applications were much more powerful and interoperable, search & discovery has remained relatively unchanged.

Twitter changed things.  Largely a result of its early adopters, Twitter evolved into more of a platform for communication (and development) than an actual web application.  Others have followed suit and we are now at a point that we have these behemoth disparate systems that getting more an more connected to the rest of the Web.

What this means for marketers that you can no longer brush Twitter, Facebook, or other platforms off as fad.  With Google moving full steam ahead integrating these third party systems, you’re SEO and SEM strategies will undoubtedly be affected.  When users search for your keywords, they are going to see real time sentiment in the search results.  This empowers consumers and marketers are going to need to find ways to market to the real-time Web as well as create more intimate relationships with their customers – or suffer the consequences.

What this means for developers is that you need to start thinking about how your technology fits into the rest of the web and how you can leverage all of its disparate platforms. Smart integration of all these systems into unified web applications is going to be occurring over the next few years.  That doesn’t mean setting up a  Twitter account and hiring an intern to send a few tweets out everyday.  It means intelligently developing a strategy to integrate all platforms seamlessly into your own system to leverage the power this new connected Web of platforms.