Twitter is developing a new, human-curated event tracking feature for its Web and mobile apps under the codename Project Lightning, a report revealed on Thursday.
A BuzzFeed-created mockup.
The feature will see a team of editors compile stories using tweets with information, photos, and videos, and let people follow an event instead of individual people, BuzzFeed said. When the service goes live, a new tab will appear in the company's mobile apps showing recent or ongoing events.
Tapping on a tab will jump users into a separate fullscreen view in which they can swipe through highlighted content. The section will include auto-play videos from Twitter's Vine and Periscope services.
People who want to follow an event without jumping into a dedicated view will be able to merge curated tweets into their timeline as long as they're tracking the event in question. Because the new feature does not require users to follow individual people, event feeds are available without login. In all cases -- including embedded stories -- events will keep updating as long as Twitter's editors add to them.
The editorial team is being selected for newsroom experience. The head of the group, Katie Jacobs Stanton, is promising that Twitter will have an editorial policy with "fairness and integrity," including guidelines that dictate which posts will appear in a story.
The feature is expected to debut sometime several months from now. Twitter is anticipating posting seven to 10 stories a day, but said it hopes to offer its curation tool to other organizations who might be able to create stories with less mainstream interests.