Where to go to find what’s hot on the Web, The Next Web (Feb 17)
1) Why be interested in real-time at all? Charles Knight points to Why Right Now is a Big Thing: 5 Users Who Care About Real Time Search (April 13, 2009) - only the "brand manager" has to do with real work - others are curiousity, ego, and getting ideas (a good reason).
2) Sources to use to find out current popular topics and keywords.
+ Google Trends
+ Twitter trending topics
+ Yahoo Buzz
+ Bing XRank
+ The Surchur real time board - a metasearch of trend trackers including the four above.
Warning - most buzz is about celebrities and news stories in the United States. Today, of course, it's Tiger Woods and many Winter Olympics events.