Twitter has made two major announcements recently – Jack Dorsey was named the permanent CEO and Adam Bain promoted to chief operating officer. Moreover, within two days of these big changes, the micro-blogging firm has come up with yet another major announcement — the launch of a cool new feature called ‘Moments.’
Targeted at “not so heavy users”
On Tuesday, Twitter launched its new feature to U.S. users making use of Android devices, iPhones or desktops for accessing the site. The app is intended to help users by selecting easy to understand content among the flood of tweets such as timely news, sports and entertainment.
With ‘Moments,’ Twitter is making a larger push of making the platform more accessible to people who are not “heavy” users. Moments are curated collections of tweets that include text, images and videos, and can be accessed by clicking on the lightning bolt symbol in the bottom bar of the Twitter app or at the top bar of the Web version of the platform.
Each Moment includes a title and a short description to help users understand what they can expect. Users who wish all the tweets selected by the curators for a particular collection to appear on their timeline will be required to follow that Moment.
Twitter making itself simpler
While announcing the feature, Madhu Muthukumar, the product manager for Moments, said people share hundreds of millions of Tweets on a daily basis on the site. “Among them are things you can’t experience anywhere but on Twitter: conversations between world leaders and celebrities, citizens reporting events as they happen, cultural memes, live commentary on the night’s big game and many more,” Muthukumar said in a blog post. It could be a challenge to find these only-on-Twitter moments, especially in cases where the users have not followed certain accounts, but “it doesn’t have to be” that difficult.
In a presentation, Muthukumar explained that users will need to update their Twitter app to get Moments on their phone. Initially, Twitter teams in New York and San Francisco are curating the Moments. Moving forward, Twitter partners including BuzzFeed, Entertainment Weekly, Mashable, Fox News, MLB, NASA, Bleacher Report, Getty Images, The New York Times, Vogue and The Washington Post will be able to curate their own Moments. Eventually, the invitation to create Moments will be extended to all.
