Going by the current trend, there will only be more real time services in the future. It pays to be early in the game :)

Yeah. Soon I can imagine a time when we could talk to each other online in real time. Like twitter but without a delay. But maybe that's a couple of years off.

have you seen mibbit.com?

Or some sort of instantaneous messaging or how about a telephonic device that transmits voice over copper lines (or even wirelessly) or perhaps meeting someone for a malted beverage at a public house of some sort.

>> "how about a telephonic device that transmits voice over copper lines"

In real time? You're crazy.

This is a fun game to play, actually, any time a new technology is introduced.

Imagine the new technology was invented first, and the old technology is actually the new challenger. What are the advantages and benefits of the old technology you can promote over the new one?

this is a tradition in the Emacs community: for each release, they publish "antinews", e.g.:

    > For those users who live backwards in time,
    > here is information about downgrading to 
    > Emacs version 21.4. We hope you will enjoy
    > the greater simplicity that results from the
    > absence of many Emacs 22.1 features.
    > [...]

http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/Ant...

Does mibbit or chatterous or an Instant message client allow for search of conversations? If not I think all chat clients should make an API to search data, especially links shared in email & chat clients!

Members of Chatterous groups can search through chat history.