Every time I open my Facebook home page, I see increasing number of friend requests. Some of them are long lost school friends, others are relatives who are geographically distant and still others are those from the same place as I live, but who cannot find an hour to socialize in real world! Apart from this there are like-minded people belonging to different ethnic backgrounds from all over the globe who’d like to indulge in intellectual conversations with me! Nowadays, it seems big virtual social hubs like Facebook, Twitter and Myspace are venues where not only you get to make social contacts, but also professional contacts. The sharp eyes of recruiters are not missing out on good talents from these websites. These places are so happening! Tell me is it possible for you to meet such diverse groups and exchange information within minutes in real life? At least, for me this is not possible.

These fantastic electronic social venues are talking about bringing us live information from every nook and corner of the world instantaneously as it happens. This is what the real time web is all about. If you think this recession has seen the end of you in terms of business investments, let me tell you here is an emerging opportunity that any sensible person with resources will not let go. Real Time Web is a futuristic concept and it’s come to stay. Your investments will be paid off well. If you don’t take my word, you can take Silicon Valley’s pioneering investor, Ron Conway’s, who first invested in Google, Paypal and Ask Jeeves. He invested in Google at a valuation of $75 M and now the valuation is a staggering $ 130 B. That should give you a cue about the potential enormity of this venture. Ron feels that real time web investment is the next big thing coming up in the online world, almost as big as the dotcom wave. He has substantial reasons for believing so. Here are some opportunities that he puts forth in front of us and this should serve as food for thought for all entrepreneurs who are short of ideas to make investments in the current, though fading, lean economy.

• Real time searches are going to be manifold – I remember, about a decade ago, during the static website era only a few people would be interested in searching the online world for information. But now you see the difference. People have stopped going to physical libraries because the internet is a convenient, fast and cost effective platform for finding information in comparison to a conventional library which is a relatively small treasure of knowledge. These days libraries are relying on information technology for providing the necessary information to their members. So, you can see maximum usage of search engines in the present era. This trend is going to increase tens of times in the future as information exchange becomes more dynamic and vast. Especially when people will be getting instantaneous information they‘ll go crazy with their searches. Your investment in real technology will reap huge fruits then just the way Ron Conway had with Google.
• Contextual Advertising – The technology by which you get to advertisements of relevance to you decided by you. For example, through the subject that you query upon using a search engine. Online advertising by itself is big business at present with Google Adwords and Adsense. With context specific advertising, it’s going to turn into a very lucrative business.
• Introduction of new advertisement technologies – These technologies aim at improving targeted advertising. NebuAd, Century Tel Inc., Embark Corp., Wide Open West (WOW) are some companies venturing out into the web advertising technology revolution with special focusing on the privacy issues.
• User verification – This is another technology that you could invest in. A major security move, user verification is fast gaining grounds as more and more security compromises are taking place across the web due to the hacker intelligentsia.
• Real web commerce – you know how successful our e-commerce transactions are .A more evolved e-commercial transactions that involve referring products and selling them online is a very dynamic venture that you can look forward to. Considering the reach of your products you can take this as a very lucrative offer for expanding your business. Instantaneous delivery of product information and prompt responses are going to make this a big success and draw in lots of crowds.
• More online payment sites- As the real web technologies are aimed at employing on a global level, there will be increased demand for websites that can deliver payments like Paypal. These websites are going to deliver not only at their sites but also at your social networking hub, just like Paypal does on twitter. If you think you’re having trouble with Paypal now, you’ll have a lot of choices to choose from.
• Online Customer relationship management – This seems to be the next big thing that’s going to happen on social networking websites. Many firms will follow you up there and you need not bother calling up the customer service cells of your service providers.
• Data Analytics – There will be heaps of real time data which needs to be analyzed for various reasons. Investing in the data analytics technologies seem to be pretty profitable.
• Printing Coupons – Printing electronic coupons seems to be a great investing opportunity in the future. Already it is a roaring business and promises to be more so in the real time age.
• Lead Generation – There can never be a better business opportunity than generating leads. That’s how Twitter became one of the biggest networking sites. Invest in lead generation and you’ll be making huge money, especially when people are really in need for cues for their searches.

These are the different real web technologies which you can invest in to make big money in future. You can start off with less in the present times and grow gradually. Lean economic conditions have made it mandatory for you to think in terms of the future. You have three good reasons to try out investing in these futuristic technologies now. Firstly, as you’re not investing in anything at present, you have some resources with you to make investments. As this is still in rudimentary stages, you don’t have much competition and thirdly vendors are all set to listen out to you. Strike the iron when its hot !