http://twitter.com/random_walker/status/11917456790
"within a few years there will be a real-time stream that aggregates essentially all activity anywhere on the web"
While Twitter, Wordpress, etc. have firehoses, this announcement is different -- aggregation across multiple services. I think the concept is very powerful and is something I've been looking into over the past few weeks.
I'm curious how many people know about Spinn3r (spinn3r.com) -- they claim to provide a real-time hose of all updates in the blogosphere. They quoted me $6k/mo. Unfortunately, Spinn3r's main product was deadpooled last year, so I'm not sure what their future is as a company. I think they should have made the real-time stream their main product. In a way they were too early.
Another startup called Superfeedr takes a different approach. They charge on a per-feed (or per-entry) basis, so their up-front costs aren't as huge. They currently cater to customers who might only want a few hundred or a few thousand specific feeds, but as they scale up they should be able to offer a bulk stream of essentially the entire blogosphere.
Then there's Google Buzz, which is also about aggregating different services. They don't currently offer a firehose but apparently you can build one yourself using PubSubHubbub, although developers report that it isn't working so great: http://groups.google.com/group/google-buzz-api/browse_thread...
But the long-term trend is clear. We're going to have an "uberhose" at some point! I have a few applications in mind of things that such a pipe would enable that are fundamentally not possible today, but I'm curious what ideas other people have.