Waiting for the 'now' search engine

Tweets, Facebook updates, vines, Instagram posts, videos, live streams - there is plenty of real time information being shared, but there isn't a very easy way to search for this.

When it appeared on the scene in the late 1990s, Google dramatically improved our ability to search the web. But the focus was and still is predominantly around historic information, published pages, previously uploaded videos and cached images.

What we need is a new search engine that can look, in real-time, across user generated content and spit it out in a coherent search result 'stream'. A narrow view such as Twitter's 'trending now' is interesting, but not nearly flexible enough while Twitter's search option is poorly organised and lacking in any advanced features. 

A 'now' search engine can solve this, perhaps ranking search results against the popularity, clout score, the authenticity of the content source (i.e. the user that's posting the info). Obviously players like Google have critical advantages in building this type of search capability (picture another tab called 'now' alongside the existing 'web | maps | images | news | videos etc...'). Twitter and Facebook also have big advantages in this space, being the source of such large quantities of user-generated-content, but it feels like fertile ground for a nimble upstart.

Of course, a main reason such a search engine doesn't exist is likely the caginess of various social media platforms when it comes to allowing third-party access to their data including limiting API calls. But there are possibly some ways around this with users linking their accounts to such a service and changing attitudes (yeah right!).

Despite these challenges, there is a clear gap between the search engines of 15 years ago and the web as we use it today and the instantaneous nature of web content. Somehow this gap will be filled. In the mean time, I and possibly many others await the 'now' search engine.