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

[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.

"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?

A curated stream!?

[fiore42]

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

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.