Twitter is working on a new way to view tweets called Project Lightning.
The company revealed its plans to Buzzfeed, which says the product is still a few months from being released. With Project Lightning, Twitter users will be able to follow events or breaking news stories. Twitter will curate event-based tweets and compile them into a single feed.
The idea is to make it easier to pay attention to a particular story, rather than individual people.
“It’s around anything that’s interesting,” explained Twitter’s Kevin Weil. “It could be current events. It could be breaking news. It could be awards shows or sports. But also cultural events and moments — things around your location and where you are. There’s amazing content, for example, posted to Throwback Thursday every single Thursday. But it’s hard to discover it; you have to work as a user to go and find the best stuff, but [we] can do it easily and can package it richly.”
The feature will be accessible from mobile devices as well as the web, and the feeds can be embedded into other web sites and shared across devices. The feeds will include images and video for a richer experience, and the tweets will be curated by real people and not algorithms. Twitter did not say exactly when the feature will be rolled out. Twitter hopes Project Lightning will help entice more people to spend time engaging with the social network.
