Since it appeared in 2009 with Google and Twitter live search, real-time has become a new web paradigm.
Internet users are not waiting anymore for information, they receive data as soon as they become available. The real-time web is effectively used in many domains such as in collaborative area, massively multi-user and in monitoring applications.
HTLM5, the latest standard in web technologies, greatly contributed to this evolution. In fact, it does not only bring new html tags to display video players but also offers brand new features (API and protocols) that unleash real-time communication applications on the web (WebSockets, WebRTC, Server Sent Events). All of this, plugin free!
We have been using these technologies in our most innovative projects since 2010. Our platform DocDokuPLM has an extensible module for communication/collaboration between users which is the perfect technical base to develop such functionalities inside your business applications. Real-time communication will probably be one of the most exciting part of the internet for the next few years.