As of a few hours ago, when you are browsing Twitter on either your phone or your computer, you may notice some conspicuous alerts about events you don’t remember seeing before.
Twitter’s newest feature alerts individuals when there are events going on nearby as reported by TechCrunch. Regardless of how new it is, the event will appear at the top of your feed, along with how far you are from the event. In addition, there is a link with details to the event and a hashtag that allows you to see more tweets that have been tagged in the last 24 hours.
Twitter has had no official announcement about this feature, and the events seem to be triggered by a combination of tweet activity and proximity to a particular event. Twitter users are speculating this particular update is part of a series of updates Twitter promised in April, when it told its members that it was going to start alerting members of local events.
Once this feature has been officially announced, speculators believe you will be able to set up events as a business or an individual. This includes networking parties or events related to promoting your business so that anyone who just happens to be on Twitter at the time will be impromptu “invited”. Likewise, if there’s an event going on in your area that you might be interested in, it’ll pop up at the top of your feed.
At the moment, there’s no pricing for this feature, if there’s pricing at all, but it is clear that you don’t have to follow the person or company hosting the event.
Twitter will also be making improvements when it comes to the way it presents news to its users coming in the next few weeks.