All posts under the overarching umbrella of one event – such as elections or a football championship or mundane events – will be collected by algorithms and shown to Twitter users once the Live button is clicked.
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Then, when the event stops those tweets end, without you having to add anyone new to follow, despite enjoying their tweets during the event. They will be also be able to upload photos and videos about the event that can be shared across websites and social platforms.
Events will be curated by a team organized by Twitter’s vice president of global media Katie Jacobs Stanton.
But the new project might also solve a problem that has plagued the company for some time: It could help Twitter finally expand its user base.
New features and making Twitter an easier platform to use are at the heart of driving user growth, however.
Last night, as news of the horrific shooting at a Charleston church emerged, my Twitter feed lit up with tweets from journalists, activists, news outlets, and everyone in between.
The content will be focused on specific events both from web and from other apps such as Vine and Periscope.
Kevin Weil, Twitter’s Senior Vice President of Product, dubs the new feature as a bold change, saying, “It’s a brand new way to look at tweets”.
Twitter has been working on Project Lightning since January, according to Buzzfeed, but it’s still not estimated to roll out for another few months.
With all this curation, Twitter is not itself actually creating any content. Though we can expect content partnerships-such as with sports leagues, or TV programmers, to incorporate exclusive videos or the like. Press it and you’ll be taken to a screen that will show various events taking place that people are tweeting about. The events will heavily emphasize photos and video, with full-screen images and autoplaying videos, along with tweets that Twitter’s curators identify as relevant.
Twitter has struggled when it comes to attracting new users, and indeed monetizing the service, to the point where chief executive Dick Costolo recently announced his resignation.
It’s not just a side-feature either; Twitter hopes Lightning will change the way people think about its social network.
The news was reported Thursday by BuzzFeed, which said the feature will launch later this year.
You’ll be able to follow events as well as people.
If you had to use one word to describe Twitter’s strategy over the previous year, that word would be experimentation.
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