Last night, as news of the horrific shooting at a Charleston church emerged, my Twitter feed lit up with tweets from journalists, activists, news outlets, and everyone in between.
But it wasn't all about the tragedy; a few E3 tweets popped up, someone finally got around to seeing Mad Max, and several scheduled messages from brands floated by—making for a very disjointed and surreal timeline. Filtering by the #Charleston hashtag was only somewhat helpful; it largely directed me to news stories rather than real-time conversations or new people worth following.
According to BuzzFeed, situations like these might soon become a thing of the past on Twitter. The service is prepping something called Project Lightning, which will allows users to more easily follow Twitter chatter about a live event.
On your phone, for example, Twitter would add a section that highlights events going on at the time—from scheduled things like the Oscars to breaking news like last night's shooting, BuzzFeed said.
Kevin Weil, senior vice president of product at Twitter, admitted to BuzzFeed that it can be "hard to discover" the best content on the site. With Lightning, however, Twitter "can do it easily and can package it richly."
Content will be selected by Twitter staff, and each item will be presented in full-screen mode (pictured) rather than the typical Twitter timeline, BuzzFeed said. Swipe to see more. You can follow an event without following the people featured in the collection, and embed the conversation on third-party sites.
Twitter did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The news comes as Twitter is in transition; it recently ousted CEO Dick Costolo and is on the hunt for a replacement.
In recent weeks, meanwhile, it has ditched the 140-character limit on direct messages, made it easier to follow conversations, allowed people to share block lists, and rolled out autoplay videos.
Earlier today, meanwhile, YouTube launched Newswire, a section on the video site that will host newsworthy, eyewitness videos often used by news outlets.