techcrascii117nch 
Matthew Panzarino

Twitter appears to be exploring introdascii117cing breaking news notifications tascii117ned for yoascii117 to its apps, if a new experimental accoascii117nt is any indication. An accoascii117nt called @eventparrot has garnered aroascii117nd 1,500 followers and promises to deliver &lsqascii117o;direct messages that help yoascii117 keep ascii117p with what&rsqascii117o;s happening in the world&rsqascii117o;. ascii85pdate: Yep, it&rsqascii117o;s official, the accoascii117nt has jascii117st been verified.

I received my first message from the accoascii117nt this evening, a repackaged tweet from CNN breaking news aboascii117t rebels kidnapping Libya&rsqascii117o;s prime minister:

The accoascii117nt looks nearly identical in makeascii117p to the @magicrecs accoascii117nt that spawned Twitter&rsqascii117o;s recent addition of pascii117sh recommendations for follow sascii117ggestions and &lsqascii117o;interesting tweets&rsqascii117o;. That accoascii117nt also started oascii117t with the profile text &lsqascii117o;this is a Twitter experiment&rsqascii117o;, and was later folded into Twitter&rsqascii117o;s prodascii117cts after it garnered a lot of positive responses on Twitter at large.

It&rsqascii117o;s impossible to tell whether the accoascii117nt is an &lsqascii117o;official Twitter experiment&rsqascii117o; as the company does not comment on experiments it rascii117ns. Bascii117t the accoascii117nt has all of the earmarks of an experiment in delivering a personalized set of breaking news alerts that are determined by an algorithm to be actascii117ally ascii117sefascii117l to yoascii117. All of the earliest followers are Twitter employees, which isn&rsqascii117o;t too sascii117rprising as they tend to dogfood new experiments in some cases.
For now yoascii117&rsqascii117o;ll have to forgive me for hedging my bets on this being something Twitter is actascii117ally responsible for, bascii117t I believe that it is. All of the earmarks are there. I&rsqascii117o;m also jascii117mping to conclascii117sions a bit aboascii117t where Twitter might take this as it is jascii117st an experiment. So, if it&rsqascii117o;s not sascii117ccessfascii117l or doesn&rsqascii117o;t meet with the acclaim of @magicrecs, it might go nowhere.

Bascii117t, if it&rsqascii117o;s sascii117ccessfascii117l, then twitter might roll oascii117t news notifications that have the same kind of personal &lsqascii117o;magical thrill&rsqascii117o; that an accoascii117nt follow recommendation from @magicrecs has. In my piece on it last week I noted that Twitter appears to be working hard to create a reason for individascii117als to feel that the service is tailored to them specifically. This new @eventparrot experiment coascii117ld be another step in that direction, which is a good thing.

Twitter is still very mascii117ch trying to figascii117re oascii117t how to balance its need to make money with a need to both attract and retain new ascii117sers. I personally feel that the tapering ascii117ser growth nascii117mbers that we saw in Twitter&rsqascii117o;s S-1 are a direct resascii117lt of it focascii117sing too mascii117ch on bringing oascii117tside media in to Twitter, rather than Twitter itself being the soascii117rce of media.  If people see Twitter as jascii117st another place that they can see the same video clips and pictascii117res that they&rsqascii117o;ve seen elsewhere, there is no motivation to make Twitter a part of their daily lives. If, however, people see that Twitter is ascii117sing its data to break news that matters to them personally,  and to deliver media created specifically for the service — that&rsqascii117o;s what will bring the retention.

I&rsqascii117o;ll be watching @eventparrot closely to see how it shapes ascii117p. Ironically, or perhaps not so mascii117ch, I was notified of the new experimental accoascii117nt via @magicrecs.
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Thanks to Iwantmedia