Twitter’s New ‘Happening Now’ Feature Starts With Sports


Twitter is emphasizing its focus on the place to be for conversation with what’s going live with a new product feature that’s fittingly called Happening Now.

At the top of your timeline, Happening Now provides a faster way to see what’s happening at the moment, and as the feature began to be rolled out Tuesday, it began with a focus on notifying fans about current sporting events. Tapping on a sporting event photo would direct users to a page that features a scoreboard along with accompanying tweets about the game.

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The feature is available on Twitter for iOS or Android apps and provides users with a feature that will ultimately include what’s happening in entertainment and breaking news. Events at the top of the timeline can also be hidden by users if the interest isn’t there.

But the emphasis from Twitter has been on what’s going on live, as the social site continues to stream live sports of all kinds and become a home for Stadium, a new 24-hour sports channel.

When sports leagues such as Major League Baseball, the PGA Tour and WNBA have streamed games on Twitter, users right under the feed have been able to scroll through a curated experience of related tweets.

Now there’s another option to learn about what games are going on live — even if Twitter doesn’t have the rights to the streaming. A New York Giants vs. Tampa Bay Buccaneers game was used as an example, and while Twitter no longer streams NFL games, the conversation surrounding the game is still going on at Twitter.