Twitter Australia hiring editors to curate content during live events

TWITTER is planning to roll-out changes to make it easier for users to find and follow breaking news and real-time events.

TWITTER is advertising for an editorial team to help run a new feature designed to make it easier for users to discover and share content during real-time events and likened by executives as the equivalent of the TV remote control.

The San Francisco-based social media company is looking to hire a full-time, Sydney-based editor and small editorial team to curate “the best tweets, photos, Vines and videos around the biggest real-world events”.

The team will help find and package content for a new feature, which will be available on Twitter’s mobile app as a new button on the menu row at the bottom of the screen, a person familiar with the product, who asked not to be named, said.

The yet-to-be-named feature, known internally as Project Lightning, will be available on iOS and Android devices, as well as desktop, the spokesperson said.

When a user selects the button they will be taken to a new section listing events happening in real-time, with tweets, photos, videos and live Periscope events, curated by human editors based on relevance and location.

According to reports, a key selling point of the new feature will be the ability for users to follow breaking news and other real-time events temporarily, with the best curated Tweets from that event appearing in the user’s timeline as they happen.

Those curated conversations will also be embeddable on other sites, such as news sites and blogs, the person familiar with the changes said.

“So it’s again, breaking this notion of a purely reverse chronological home timeline where the tweets are only from the people you follow, and reimagining it to make it more about what’s happening now in your world that you care about,” Twitter’s head of product Kevin Weil told The Verge last month.

Crucially, the content will be able to be viewed by users regardless of whether they are logged in or logged out, reflecting a broader Twitter strategy to extend the reach of its content and recruit new users.

The new Project Lightning features were flagged back in June, just days before the resignation of Twitter’s CEO Dick Costolo, who reportedly fully supported the company’s change in direction.

Costolo told BuzzFeed at the time the new features were not a response to critics.

But they will answer criticisms from users who say they find it difficult to find content of value or participate in relevant conversations around local issues.

On an earnings call last week, Twitter’s interim CEO, Jack Dorsey, described the company’s recent results as “unacceptable”, addng that the business needed to simplify the service and better communicate the service’s value to users.

“You should expect Twitter to be as easy as looking out the window to see what’s happened,” Dorsey said on the call.

“We need to be not just a window to the world, but the best microphone in the world, too.

“If we meet these expectations – and we will – Twitter will be the first thing everyone checks at the beginning of the day.”

Twitter could not confirm the timing for the rollout in Australia but it is expected to become available in the next two months.

Follow @GregBarila

Originally published as Twitter Australia hiring editors to curate content during live events