Twitter will start curating the best tweets about daily events

Twitter CEO Dick Costolo will officially leave the building next month, but one of his ambitious pet projects — codenamed "Project Lightning" — just might change the way people interact with Twitter even after he's gone. According to a report from BuzzFeed's Mat Honan, Lightning will highlight specific events or conversations happening that very moment with the help of editors who'll weave a sort of visual tapestry from textual tweets, photos and videos.

Let's say you dive into one of these events. Instead of poking around the traditional timeline, those chosen tweets will take up your entire screen (and, in the case of video, will start playing automatically). If everything goes according to plan, you might see between seven and ten such "events" a day, too, which means Twitter's got some media-savvy hiring to do. Twitter has almost always been a facilitator, an engine for news and organizations that package it up. Now, with Lightning as part of the mix, it's going to turn that unending stream of noise into something dramatically more digestible without anyone else's help. But here's the kicker: It seems like you'll be able to dig into those events even if you don't have a Twitter account. For a company that catches flack whenever it announces disappointing user numbers and desperately needs fresh eyes that'll keep coming back, this is a bold -- and necessary -- move. With any luck, Lightning and its immediate (hopefully thoughtful) context just might be the thing that turns the Twitter-averse into people who can't get enough.