Twitter's new feature allows you to follow events

Twitter is now in the process of making its real-time news feed accessible to everyone, according to media reports.

The new product is named Project Lightning and "it's a brand new way to look at tweets", BuzzFeed quoted Twitter's Kevin Weil as saying.

At present, you need to have a certain level of dexterity in order to be able to track major stories and events on Twitter. You have to work your way across the hashtags to identify the right ones to serve your purpose.

Twitter is now taking an editorial approach to news curation as a team of people with newsroom backgrounds will identify the best tweets for anyone online trying to follow a news story.

"We've seen in the past that we have so much conversation around events. But the challenge we've had over the years is, although we have the world's greatest content, it's like having a television without a channel guide or even a remote control," the Twitter spokesperson was quoted as saying.

Lighting will serve as that remote control. On mobile at least, the new product will live in Twitter's home row and show collections about current events and breaking news.

Each collection will be updated in real time and load instantly.

Crucially, the new functionality will work whether one is an active user or not. The collections themselves can be embedded online in other apps.

It will take a few months before lightning is rolled out, and there is currently no projected release date for the functionality. But Twitter is aggressively trying to innovate.