New Twitter feature ‘Moments’ goes live for everyone

MANILA, Philippines – As one of the most popular social networks around, Twitter continues to be one of the places people go to when they want to catch up on news and online trends. 

Knowing this, Twitter launched a tool back in October 2015 to cater to this practice of seeking stories on their site and app: Moments. The feature, then on a limited rollout, gave some users the power to create a stream of tweets under one topic for a more captivating news experience. 

New! Find the best of Twitter in an instant with Moments: https://t.co/QAKGUSVBbT pic.twitter.com/KAjfkysVKC

— Twitter (@twitter) October 6, 2015

On Wednesday, Sept 28, Twitter finally opened up Moment creation capabilities to all Twitter users. Now, everyone with an account can curate select tweets based on subject matter and then share it with everyone. The update was announced in a video posted on the social network: 

For everyone who wants to make a Moment – starting today you can! Creators everywhere can now tell stories with Tweets. pic.twitter.com/ZJtNBoTPWf

— Twitter (@twitter) September 28, 2016

How Moments works

To get started, all you have to do is click on the “Create new Moment” button (found in the Moments tab that looks like a lightning bolt) and it will open up the Moments creator where you can type out a title, select a cover photo, and then curate tweets you want to include in the stream.

Viewing Moments is as simple as opening the Moments tab, selecting what you want to view from the list of Moments and swiping right and left to navigate from one tweet to another. To see the full tweet as well as add a reaction, tap on the tweet once. To exit the Moment stream, swipe down.

New push for profits

News of the micro-blogging platform having trouble achieving profitability has been going around lately and this new feature may be a push to fix this. Moments essentially makes content on Twitter easier to navigate and more visually appealing to consume – traits that seem to be designed to entice new users that haven’t been drawn to the network’s text-reliant micro-blogging style. 

Twitter’s attempt at reinvention can also be seen in its lifting of character limits on some aspects of a Twitter post. 

There have also been rumors about Twitter being in line for sale to several big names such as Google, Microsoft, cloud computing group Salesforce, US telco Verizon, and more.

Will this new feature boost Twitter’s profits and gain the social media giant new users?

How would you use Twitter Moments to share news and trends to your followers?

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