Twitter is experimenting with breaking news alerts

Twitter has been quietly testing a feature that could push it further into the news business.

The social network is now sending some of its mobile app users push notifications about breaking news events that lead into relevant "moments" -- or curated collections of tweets around a topic of note.

A Twitter spokesperson confirmed to Mashable on Monday that the alerts are part of an ongoing trial.

While the test has been happening seemingly unreported for months now, two major alerts on Monday -- one on a horrific attack in Berlin and another on Donald Trump securing an electoral college victory -- drew attention to its existence among many unacquainted users (myself included) for the first time.

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The alerts are apparently targeted to different groups of users based on what the company perceives your interests to be. Twitter does not seem to have a hard and fast rule determining when they are sent out -- past notifications have centered on election night, Olympic results and even ABC's The Bachelorette, among other things.

While Twitter has long offered emergency alerts like extreme weather notices and law enforcement announcements through third parties, this new feature is more similar to services offered by media company apps and requires more editorial judgment.

Such a feature seems like a natural extension of Twitter's "moments" hub, where the company groups significant tweets around news stories of the day. Twitter has been gradually bolstering "moments" over the course of the past year with the addition of new partners, sponsorship opportunities and user-generated options.