A general meme around Twitter, Inc.’s microblogging come messaging service is that it’s difficult to discover or follow events of note; of course if you’re a regular Twitter user it’s not even remotely hard, but it’s apparently a big enough problem that Twitter is doing something about it, and that something is currently dubbed “Project Lightning.”

According to Buzzfeed, who received the story exclusively from Twitter (oh what strange times we live in,) the new service will give the company a way to show the best of Twitter to both logged-in and logged-out users on a variety of platforms.

Users will access the curated feeds via a new button that will appear in the center of the home row. After pressing it, users are then taken to a screen that shows various live events taking place that people are tweeting about.

Those events might include pop culture events such as the Oscars or the Grammys but may also focus on breaking serious news as well, such as Earthquakes or yet another mass shooting in the United States. According to the write-up: “essentially, if it’s an event that a lot of people are tweeting about, Twitter could create an experience around it.”

The experience provided, however, will be anything other than Twitter like, and arguably will look something similar to Snapchat, Inc.’s “Discover” news service; the curated content will be presented full screen per tweet and will have an emphasis on photos and video, supposedly to allows users to get the bigger picture as to what is happening.

Like Snapchat, users will peruse the new service by swiping.

Running the new service will be a team of editors under Twitter’s head of Global Media Operations Katie Jacobs Stanton, who will select what they think are the best and most relevant tweets and package them into a collection.

Share and share alike

Twitter’s constant desire to increase viewing numbers to satisfy Wall Street post-IPO may potentially see a significant boost with the new service, with the curated feeds able to be embedded on other sites,  with the embeds updating along with any changes to the curated content.

Longer term, and again it’s all about viewing numbers, Twitter has suggested that it may expand the service and eventually allow third parties to make their own curated content, with the example of a sailing company running a curated feed on sailing news.

It’s not clear from the report how much they might open this up though; will it be the more closed shop of Snapchat and Facebook, Inc.’s Newsfeed service where only selected “partners” are given access, or could it potentially eventually be a free for all where anyone and everyone can make their own curated feeds? Time will tell.

There’s no confirmed launch date for the new feature, with a statement simply saying it may be “a few months out,” but “things could change.”

Image credit: Buzzfeed