Real-time search engine Collecta is turning to XMPP, the instant messaging protocol also powering Google Wave, in its efforts to court outside developers into creating new applications for its results.
The company, which already bases its core architecture on XMPP, is releasing a second set of application programming interfaces using the protocol today. One of about a dozen startups racing to offer the best search results from what's just been published on the web, Collecta pulls data from blog posts, comments and news feeds in addition to Twitter. Like competitor OneRiot, it's using APIs to distribute its results across the web and encourage independent developers to find creative ways to use its technology.
With XMPP, or extensible messaging and presence protocol, Collecta's APIs can push out results as they happen instead of requiring outside apps to constantly poll the search engine every few minutes for new data. Startups in the real-time space are turning to different protocols like XMPP or PubSubHubbub, which Google Reader recently chose, for more instantaneous updates.
"This gives you the ability to introduce lively information into a page and it's where we'll stake our claim in the world of real-time search," said Collecta's CEO Gerry Campbell. "XMPP's very robust -- it's got eight to 10 years of development on it."
Campbell's also launching a contest on ChallengePost to find the developer who can come up with the best app based on the new APIs. Daniel Goodwin won an earlier Collecta contest by creating a Firefox plug-in that gives relevant real-time search results based whatever a user's browsing.