Social Media

Twitter offering curated content around events

Twitter, responding to criticism about stagnating growth, walked me through "Project Lightning," its much-anticipated revamp to help users easily find value in the 500 million tweets that are sent every day.These changes—set to roll out this fall—could help address concerns which have dragged down Twitter shares more than 20 percent since its November 2013 IPO.

Twitter wants to make things easier for you
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Twitter wants to make things easier for you

The company's new feature will organize content around live events and themes based on things that are happening—and people are talking about—in the moment. The content will be chosen not just by algorithm, but by people, in this case a team of editors at Twitter. It'll be easy to navigate and find relevant content without having to search, log in, or having to understand Twitter's language of hashtags and @ symbols.

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Here's how it'll work. If you click on a tab or button within Twitter's app or Twitter.com you'll be directed to a page with about 10 options—events and themes based on what's happening in that moment. The idea is to tap into Twitter's real-time conversation—the options could include a TV program or awards show, sporting events, or a current event that's trending, like the response to the shooting in Charleston, South Carolina.

The pages focused on each theme or event will gather all sorts of content—Tweets, Vine videos, live Periscope feeds. To filter the massive amount of content, Twitter will employ a team of curators, the first time the company will use an editorial approach, rather than just rely on algorithms.

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This new service is notable for all the things it does not require, like logging in or selecting individuals or news organizations to follow. You don't have to search for content or be familiar with hashtags. There's no confusion about the language of Twitter communication to understand conversations happening on the service. It's just the top content, as selected by a team of editors.

For those who are already using Twitter, they can select an event and opt to have all related content flow into their Twitter feed. That content would appear for as long as the event or topic is relevant, without having to follow individual Twitter users. The theme or event would disappear as soon as the event ends, without having to unfollow anyone.

With all this curation, Twitter is not itself actually creating any content. Though we can expect content partnerships—such as with sports leagues, or TV programmers, to incorporate exclusive videos or the like.

Read MoreAnything left that can save Twitter's stock?

In a departure from tradition, Twitter will invest in traditional marketing to get the word out to more potential users. It'll start with online and radio ads, expanding to television advertising next year.

Twitter shares moved marginally higher on this news but closed lower on the day—we'll see whether the changes get users and investors on board.