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Twitter's Project Lightning to Let Users Follow Live Events, Not Just People

Twitter's Project Lightning to Let Users Follow Live Events, Not Just People

By NDTV Correspondent | Updated: 19 June 2015 09:32 IST

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Twitter will start curating tweets on live events, the micro-blogging service said, as it plans major changes to make its real-time news feed more user friendly.

Dubbed Project Lightning, the changes will let users follow events instead of just people, and instantly upload photos and videos that can be shared across websites, social news and entertainment website Buzzfeed reported on Thursday.

A team of editors will curate the most visually appealing and relevant tweets about say, a red-carpet event or shooting, and present them in one place, so that users need not be flooded with every single tweet as it is posted, Buzzfeed said.

Twitter's mobile app will show both pre-scheduled events and breaking news events, Buzzfeed said.

Twitter spokeswoman Rachel Millner confirmed the report but declined to comment further.

Twitter has struggled with user growth. About one billion people have visited the website, but only 302 million are users.

Twitter is undergoing a transition currently, and searching for a new chief executive following Dick Costolo's announcement from last week that he is stepping down. Co-founder Jack Dorsey will be the interim CEO.

The firm on Wednesday announced its acquisition of artificial intelligence startup Whetlab, bolstering the analytics capacity which is becoming increasingly important for social networks.

Terms were not announced for the deal, which was disclosed in a tweet by the Twitter engineering team and on the website of the Massachusetts-based Whetlab.

Twitter did not comment on its plan for the service, but artificial intelligence can be used to determine the most relevant tweets and advertising messages for each user, or to better filter spam.

Written with agency inputs

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Further reading: Project Lightning, Social, Twitter