Twitter will emphasize live news and events in your feed, as part of ‘transformation’

It’s no secret that Twitter is a struggling platform. While the microblogging social network is certainly a cultural force, its user growth is stagnant, and it can’t hold a candle to other social media sites like Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat.

Twitter knows this and is trying to do a better job of promoting what it is and what it does better than its competitors. That’s why it’s pushing a new set of features that will emphasize live events and live news in your timeline and notifications, via The Verge.

If there’s one thing Twitter does better than any other platform, its live breaking news. Many stories even here at Android Authority are discovered on Twitter first. The only problem is that most people don’t know how it works.

That’s why bringing those features front-and-center is a good move for the company.

One of the most significant changes coming soon is push notifications from Twitter about important breaking news stories, such as natural disasters. But Twitter will also notify you when events are happening that it thinks you will be interested in.

Once you click the notification, you’ll be presented with pictures and tweets surrounding the event at the top of your feed, so you can see what’s going on.

The Explore tab will also focus on these new features. The Trending tab will stay first-in-line, but there’s also a personalized “For You” tab that centers specifically on things Twitter thinks you’re interested in. Then there will be more general content areas such as News and Sports.

Check out the GIF below of World Cup news on Twitter:

Twitter claims that these updates are part of a “much bigger strategy” for the company in the “much longer arc in the transformation of Twitter.”

Twitter power users have criticized the company over the following years for adding too many confusing features to the platform in an effort to help newcomers understand how the site works. It’s yet to be seen if this new “transformation” will be helpful or a nuisance to Twitter’s core base, which continually brings up the idea that Twitter should be a simple, reverse-chronological-order feed of information.

One thing is for sure: Twitter needs to keep trying things out until it can figure out a way to get its user numbers moving in an upward direction.

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