The Guardian’s US operation announced yesterday the launch of a new socially-driven aggregation series, #smarttakes.

According to a post on Comment Is Free the new project will see the introduction of “a pop-up aggregation tool that collects standout pieces of commentary and analysis from Guardian readers”.

We’ve been experimenting with the concept in recent weeks, like when the drone scandal broke, when Facebook went public and when the Montreal protests erupted. As of today, pop-up aggregation has a permanent home on the Guardian.

Currently the project is US only. The project will see users involved by tweeting about comment pieces with the #smarttakes hashtag. According to the Guardian announcement “great recommendations will also get retweeted from @GuardianUS”.

Hatip: Nieman Journalism Lab.

Reporting on the new development Nieman adds that the Guardian will also offer a “curated roundup” on the series’ page.

also spoke to Amanda Michel, open editor for the Guardian but who was previously involved in setting up #MuckReads at ProPublica, the non-profit’s “ongoing collection of watchdog reporting elsewhere”. The Nieman post highlights some of the lessons Michel learnt with #MuckReads:

Over email, Michel told me one lesson from #MuckReads was how to create a long-term commitment to using a hashtag. That helps not just to populate the project, but to build support, she said.

On the subject of open journalism at the Guardian, we recently spoke to national editor Dan Roberts about some of the lessons learned from the Guardian’s UK projects such as its open newslist experiment and Reality Check blog.