Twitter To Introduce Curated Information Stream

stephendavion writes: Twitter will start curating tweets on live events, the microblogging 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. Another reader points out coverage at Wired, which argues that this is a bigger change for Twitter than it sounds: "What Project Lightning represents, more than anything, is the long-overdue death of the Twitter timeline. (Or its demotion, at the very least, in the hope it’ll quietly resign.) With this change, Twitter doesn’t have to look like an endlessly flowing, context-free stream of tweets; instead, you can see a hand-curated set of tweets, links, images, and videos related to what’s happening right now. ... In short, this effort puts a stake through the idea that Twitter is a social network. It’s not. It never should have tried to be. It’s not about people, jokes, and #brands. It’s about information, about news and pictures and stories."

Comments

change

[blogagog]

"It’s not about people, jokes, and #brands. It’s about information, about news and pictures and stories." \n And now it's about what's important according to whomever the is the curator of the information. Hey, how do you make a new line in a comment on slashdot?

Re:change

[hughbar]

Well exactly, and the Kardashians are more important than war or hunger, certainly.

Re:change

[plover]

"It's not about people, jokes, and #brands. It's about information, about news and pictures and stories."

Look at every other mass communication system, ever. They all have had to deal with noise. Online site owners have evolved some things that work pretty well, like Slashdot's moderation system with metamoderation, voting schemes, "like" buttons, etc. More than 20 years ago usenet news had cancelmoose. Offline we have long had people like newspaper editors, publishers, standards and practices teams, and even government censors.

Either publishers find a way to deal with spammers, trolls, and griefers; or readers abandon them once the signal-to-noise ratio gets too low as they collapse under the weight of carrying terabytes of gibberish and spam. Frankly I'm surprised Twitter hasn't offered this kind of solution sooner.

Re:change

[blogagog]

Testing... Did it work? Nope. The ENTER key doesn't work, and pasting from notepad doesn't work. Must be something weird with my config. Thanks for the help though.

Re:change

[Jane Q. Public]

You use />.

Re:change

[blogagog]

Haha duh. That never even occurred to me.

Thanks so much!

Hashtags?

[wardrich86]

So how is this different from searching by hashtags? Isn't this the reason why they were invented in the first place? What they should start doing is enforcing how they're used and preventing people from making every word a hashtag.

Re:Hashtags?

[Anonymous Coward]

It means they can bury the shit they don't like (such as racist comments in #) without tripping over the legal culpability that comes with directly moderating peoples tweets.

Not sure this is good idea

[Anonymous Coward]

"In short, this effort puts a stake through the idea that Twitter is a social network. Itâ(TM)s not. It never should have tried to be. Itâ(TM)s not about people, jokes, and #brands."

Maybe it never "should" have been, but today it "is" that way and some people like that. I like having free communication and knowing a tweet will be seen by followers. A few years back when Facebook decided not to show all posts to all followers really sucked and for brands, forced them to pay per post to allow the post to be seen by most (but still not all) followers.

Is the next move to charge a fee to be included in said "curated" feeds?

If they want to pay a staff person to study the waterfall of tweets coming in over a given subject and hand pick some to share on some featured timeline, that sounds alright, but even still, now that person has become a filter (censor?) for what the masses following the event are reading. Are the tweets of police beating the hell out of onlookers getting through?

That's the real beauty of Twitter. It's a party line where anyone can say anything and of you want to see it, you follow. If not, un-follow. Simple. Society needs a social outlet like this and that's what twitter "is", so can we leave it be?

"Hand-curated"

[PopeRatzo]

instead, you can see a hand-curated set of tweets, links, images, and videos related to what’s happening right now.

I can "curate" my own social media, thank you. I don't need some marketing department making decisions on what is important to me.

Weren't we already past the point where we need network gatekeepers telling us the news? What is this, the 1970s revisited?

Re:"Hand-curated"

[Anonymous Coward]

C'mon PopeRatzo, I'd think this would be a change you'd fully support given your ideological leanings. You gonna have a bunch of San Franciscan Twitter SJW's in charge of curating tweets from fellow SJW media types and thus putting a radical leftist editorial slant on the events happening in the world. Twitter will finally become the platform for the true believers unhampered by those problematic conservative voices and trolls.

Re:"Hand-curated"

[Ol Olsoc]

C'mon PopeRatzo, I'd think this would be a change you'd fully support given your ideological leanings. You gonna have a bunch of San Franciscan Twitter SJW's in charge of curating tweets from fellow SJW media types and thus putting a radical leftist editorial slant on the events happening in the world. Twitter will finally become the platform for the true believers unhampered by those problematic conservative voices and trolls.

The only thing worse than being witty is not being witty, AC.

Re:"Hand-curated"

[Ol Olsoc]

Really? You think that? You think that not being witty is the only thing "worse" than being witty? Are you sure that silly hyperbole doesn't outrank that at least a little?

Well, there is always silly walks too

A curated stream!?

[fiore42]

That's such great news I just have to say YAHOO!

Re:A curated stream!?

[plover]

Congratulations, you win at Internet today!

By the way, Yahoo! called, they want their 1990s back.

Better be gluten free

[sir_eccles]

Farm to table artseian hand curates tweets or I'm not interested.

Censorship

[Anonymous Coward]

"hand-curated" is a trendy way of saying censorship. They will control and shape what information gets out.

Re:Fuck Dice, Fuck Beta Creep

[oogoliegoogolie]

Ditto Fuck Dice, ditto fuck Beta Creep. We said we don't want it so why do you dumb fucks at Dice still keep trying to put this crap in here? If I wanted to share everything I'd be on Twitter or Facebook or using the "social app of the month" on my phone.
I've had it! I'll check back in a year to see how much you look like Digg. Goodbye Slashdot, good riddance Dice. Maybe you should change you name to Douche?

Killing twitter to kill twitter?

[JohnFen]

There are already plenty of places that I can get a curated news feed if that's what I want. What I want from Twitter is to see what the people I'm interested in are saying. If, as the Wired article asserts, this is an effort to just change Twitter into a news outlet, then Twitter would no longer be offering anything of value to me.

To paraphrase...

[ErikTheRed]

Who will curate the curators? Lots of thought control implications here.