Twitter, which has been struggling to add to its user base, launched Moments, a curated list of “stories unfolding” on the social media platform, broken down into topics like ‘entertainment’ and ‘sports’.

Moments will include images, auto-playing videos, Vines and GIFs along with Tweets.

The new feature is a result of Project Lightning that Twitter has been working on for some time now.

The Wall Street Journal mentioned the project in a report about Instagram’s new ‘explore’ page which will help users sift through the 70 million-plus photos and videos posted on it every day, which the report said reflected a desire to become a source for the latest news.

In a similar vein, Madhu Muthukumar, product manager of Moments, explained the reason for launching his product, saying “We know finding these only-on-Twitter moments can be a challenge, especially if you haven’t followed certain accounts.”

“Tapping on the new lightning bolt tab on your phone opens a list of Moments that matter now. As new stories emerge throughout the day, we continue to update this list,” he added.moments_1

For stories that update very frequently — like live sporting events or awards shows — users can follow the ‘Moment’, which blends the Tweets directly into a user’s timeline.

Most moments are assembled by a curation team, and some are contributed by Twitter’s partners including Buzzfeed, Entertainment Weekly, New York Times and Mashable.

“While we’re working with a small group of partners now, we plan to expand it in the future,” said Muthukumar.

Moments is only available to US iOS and Android users for now, with limited global accessibility.

The company said it is “hard at work to bring this same functionality to more places in the coming weeks and months”.

In August, Twitter experimented with a news tab, in a bid to provide its users with the most timely and relevant content.

The report said curating news headlines could give Twitter the opportunity to sell ads into the stream, which has proved difficult for the platform in the past given its conversational nature.

Twitter and Facebook-owned Instagram are not the only social media giants trying to get a lead in news.

Google recently partnered with 30 publishers on the ‘Accelerated Mobile Pages’ initiative that speeds up the process of searching for and pulling up news articles.

Meanwhile, Facebook is reportedly working on a breaking news app and earlier this year partnered with nine publishers to launch Instant Articles.