I work for a Chicago-based trade magazine that is aimed at food and beverage retailers. Our company is looking to set up all of its publications with several different social networking sites. One of them is Twitter. While I understand how Twitter works, I have yet to see a good example of a publication that benefits from it. Could someone explain the benefits Twitter would provide to a trade magazine?

Tweeting is sending messages to you bored to your friends and followers to see. You can also send direct tweets so only a spisific person will see your stadus or message

Google has launched ‘real-time’ search to give users up-to-the-second information.

The search engine will update its information at the same rate as it receives it, which means postings on sites such as Twitter and Facebook will appear immediately at the bottom of the page.

The new data – from more than a billion pages on the web – will scroll past in real-time, without any need to refresh the page. Users can also stop the page from continually scrolling by clicking on the ‘stop updating’ phrase.

Previously, a new search request was the only way to see the blog posts, status updates and other information that Google had collected since the previous query.

Scroll down to see Google real-time in action

Real-time: Google users can now see updates from sites such as Twitter and Facebook immediately on the Google search engine

The information will be shown within Google’s normal results page and will also be available on smart phones like the iPhone.

A spokesman for Google said: ‘Now, immediately after conducting a search, you’ll be able to see live updates from people on popular sites like Twitter and Friendfeed, as well as headlines from news and blog posts that have been published seconds ago. 

‘All of these updates are ranked to show the freshest, most relevant results related to what you’re looking for.’

At an event staged at the Computer History Museum in California, Google said this was the first time ever that any search engine has integrated the real-time web into its results page.

‘Information is being created at a pace I have never seen before and in this environment, seconds matter,’ said Google fellow Amit Singhal.

Google real-time: The screen continually updates with new information, without the need to refresh. Users also have the option to pause the scrolling action

‘There is so much information being generated out there that getting you relevant information is the key to the success of a product like this. It’s all about relevance, relevance, relevance.’

Google said the feature is now live and will take a couple of days to be rolled out across the world. Updates from Twitter will be included right away, while those from Facebook and MySpace are not expected to be integrated into results until the new year.

As social networking sites become increasingly popular forums for swapping opinions, offering news tips and highlighting interesting stories, Google, Yahoo and Microsoft have all been scrambling to retool their search engines so they reel in and showcase real-time data more rapidly.

Google relies on its dominance of the search engine market to drive the bulk of more than $21billion (£13billion) in advertising sales annually.

The company would not be drawn, however, on the financial details of the deals it has done with Twitter, MySpace and Facebook.

Facebook has publicly stated it is not making money on this collaboration and that the updates it will give Google come from the public profile pages that can be seen by anybody on the web.