In the last couple of years, Twitter has become arguably the digital world’s forefront destination for immediate breaking news updates.
Users feeds are littered with updates from the world of news, sport, politics and current affairs as they happen, while ongoing stories are continually updated from news organisations and eye witnesses before traditional online and broadcast media are able to prepare their reports.
Now the social network wants to take this one step further by trialling ways to bring these breaking news updates directly to users without the need to check or refresh their news feed.
The company is working on ways to notify users of stories they may be interested in by sending updates via Direct Messages. Twitter has set up a new account called @EventParrot where users can sign up to become part of the experiment.
The verified account, which has already gained 15,000 followers, features the biography: “This is a Twitter experiment. Follow me to receive direct messages that help you keep up with what’s happening in the world.”
The first message sent to followers informed followed that “Rebels have kidnapped Libya’s prime minister, his spokeswoman told CNN,” along with a link to the CNN story.
Other than that, there has been no official comment from Twitter on the experiment, save for designer Paul Stamatiou’s confirmation to The Next Web that the company is behind the project.
The launch of the EventParrot account bares resemblance to the social network’s @MagicRecs initiative which sent willing users links to tweets they may be interested in via direct messages.
MagicRecs is now part of the Twitter mobile ecosystem, so it seems fair to suggest that if the EventParrot trial goes well then it could become the norm before too long.
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Editorial independence
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
