Topsy Joins The Real-Time Search Bandwagon

New search engine Topsy launched this week touting results ranked based on what people are linking to on Twitter. Not a new concept. And since it depends on the interests of Tweeters, the search engine returns some very funny results, as Valleywag notes. (Topsy tries to sift out possibly irrelevant — although oft-Tweeted — posts by also taking into account the “influence” of Tweeters).

But Topsy is backed by almost $15 million in venture capital — per the WSJ — and it shows once again that real-time search is all the rage. Two other startups — OneRiot (which also sifts through recommendations on Digg) and Tweetmeme — launched their own similar real-time search engines earlier this month. What remains, of course, is for Twitter to beef up its own search service. Executives have hinted that’s coming soon.