Twitter, Inc. has started testing a new “News tab” feature with users of its Android and iOS apps in the United States, which as the name suggests, offers a service that provides breaking news to users.

According to reports, the tab is located at the center bottom of the iOS app (Android wasn’t mentioned) and offers a list of curated tweets from mainstream media companies which highlight news that Twitter thinks a particular user may be interested in.

It’s not clear how individualized the news provided is, for example whether it taps into Twitter’s archives to suggest matches of news stories based on a users’ part actions, or whether, at least at the moment, it’s just a generic, one size fits all news service.

Of note, this new service apparently isn’t part of Twitter’s Project Lightning, the initiative revealed in June where Twitter was said to be working on a service that curated content on live events and was supposed to, also, be delivered by a button in the center of the tab lists; it’s not clear whether Project Lightning remains ongoing, has been canceled, or will somehow be integrated into this new News tab offering at some date in the future.

“Mainstreaming”

The new News tab feature, along with the proposed Project Lightning, are all about making Twitter more appealing for the so-called “mainstream” of users who don’t currently use Twitter because, apparently, it’s difficult to use, or something along those lines.

As with Project Lightning, the same point needs to be made again: while it’s understandable that Twitter, a listed, publicly traded company since 2014, needs to grow to appease its shareholders, it should tread warily in forcing new features on its current users who are, as a majority, more than happy with how the service is currently.

Without being able to play with the news tabs as it’s not currently available outside of the United States, it does look fairly unobtrusive and if properly tailored to individual user preferences versus simply vanilla one size fits all news, it could actually be a seriously good value-add for the company.

There is one proviso though: that they don’t go further in putting it front and center, pushing users to use it in a similar way that Snapchat, Inc. is currently doing with its Discover service; ultimately doing so would damage the service, and push loyal users away, just as it has done with Snapchat.

There’s no word as to if, or when, the testing of the news tab will occur outside the United States.

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