The fanfare faded fairly quickly for Cuil, the search engine from two ex-Googlers that was supposedly going to leave the search giant dead in its tracks.

Cuil never quite lived up to the hype, but it stuck around, and has now incorporated real-time search into its results pages, putting it in competition with Twitter and Facebook, according to Mashable.

As users look for news and updates on a story or conversation as it's happening, interest in real-time search has spiked, with Facebook and Twitter leading the way, thanks to their hold on the information. But other search players, including Bing, are jumping into the real-time pool just like Cuil.

When users search Cuil for current hot topics, the search engine provides a link on the results page that provides a pop-up with real-time results. Users can scroll through the results, which are culled from blogs and news sources, and gauge a topic's popularity with an accompanying "hotness" meter.