Twitter Inc continues its trend of making its own alternatives to third party tools by announcing the release of Curator, which it says “enables media publishers to discover, curate and display the best Twitter content on any screen.” Twitter had already released information about Curator at the News:Rewired Conference in London back in February, but the service is now officially released to the public.

Curator allows media organizations to curate a wide range of Twitter content for their sites, taking advantage of the micro blog’s endless stream of user generated content while catering it to their specific brand and audience. This includes images, video, and Vines that are shared through Twitter. The platform also includes tools that allow organizations to discover relevant conversations on Twitter, giving them the ability to filter content by location, language, follower count, hashtags, and more.

“For example, you can find Tweets including #MarchMadness, from users with 100+ followers located in the US,” writes Product Manager Matt Dennebaum. “You can then use Curator to display the best Tweets from that search into your mobile app, during a TV show broadcast, or on any screen regardless of size.”

Curator also has tools for monitoring several types of analytics on what Tweets people are reading, sharing, and interacting with.

Its features make Curator appear to be a direct answer to third party tools like Storify, which also allows clients to sift through content on Twitter in order to curate the material for their audiences.  But one way in which Curator differentiates itself from similar tools is its ability to provide real-time access to Tweets and Vines, while other platforms frequently take a bit of time to filter through new content.

Dennebaum notes that Curator’s first round of users have had great success with the tool, saying, “Those who have been testing Curator have seen strong increases in audience engagement, participation and attention. With these encouraging results, we’re opening up the product to all media publishers around the world, for free. This includes news organizations, production companies, broadcasters, local governments, and even concert venues.”

If your organization is interested in trying out Curator, you can request access here.

photo credit: mkhmarketing via photopin cc