Imagine a business based on real-time information provided to participants in an information market. The owner of the information flow charges for real-time access, and gives 15 minute delayed information for free. Perhaps it would look something like this. Individuals pay a fee (or look at contextual ads) and would get the real-time feed from resellers. Resellers would pay a fee to the information provider to sell the real-time feed through their system.
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In order for these economics to work, real-time flow (plus the ability to track keywords in that flow) would have to have a demonstrable higher value than delayed information. For instance, real time conversations would only be possible in the real-time feed. The other important factor would be the completeness of the information. The flow of information would need to consolidate all publication via hyperlinks in all venues.
Some sort of messaging infrastructure would be required to receive and relay the information into the live data stream infrastructure. Historical data would be archived and charted, some firms would package and sell this view. Maps of volume of tracks would provide a kind of real-time zeitgeist.
Could there be a service that served as the public record for all publishing events on the Network?
I say no to that approach. Yes it may have some advantages but delivering in time is a priority that can't be compromised for most. Quality is an undeniable factor, but time is of the essence.
Timeliness is probably a more intelligent metric than real-time. it requires knowledge of the subscriber's context and ability of publisher to deliver just-in-time.
The thing is that the time embargo needs to be based on some genuine scarcity, or at least control over, the information, which the exchanges do still exert. I'm not sure that there is much value in the real-time *delivery* itself; in the long run, it will be almost as cheap to distribute the information real-time as delayed, and the information providers will move to a better system.