Twitter looks set to follow Google in creating value from content collation. The value Twitter is trying to unlock is in context rather than content itself, by collating material together around popular hashtags.
Twitter is hiring editorial staff to curate ‘hashtag pages’ on specific events, as the micro-blogging firm further encroaches on traditional media territorry.
Last week Twitter announced the launch of a #NASCAR hashtag page, where users can “discover the best Tweets, photos and perspectives from NASCAR drivers and their families, crews, commentators, celebrities and fans – all in a single timeline.”
The Tweets are gathered through “a combination of algorithms and curation”. In other words, although the page uses Twitter’s automated search function, there is an editorial hand at work which chooses which posts to highlight.
Twitter has perhaps taken another step towards becoming more like a media company by hiring the Washington Post’s social media editor Mark S Luckie to act “as a liaison between Twitter and the journalism community.”
In a blog posting, Reuters’ Ross Neumann commented: “Twitter revolutionised journalism once before, and news organisations responded with the social media editor. Now it seems that the social media editor, the reaction to disruption, could be a victim of it.”