In an attempt to increase user engagement on Twitter, the micro-blogging site has launched a new service, which will curate the popular stories in the day for the Twiterrati. The new button called Moments is marked with a lightning bolt symbol and fetches the news and videos pulled from various users and news organizations on the feed.
So wondering who curates these? Well, there’s a small team based in New York who is allotted this task. The team would segregate posts into tabs like today, sports entertainment and news. Madhu Muthukumar, Twitter’s product manager for Moments, said: “We know finding these only-on-Twitter moments can be a challenge, especially if you haven’t followed certain accounts. But it doesn’t have to be. Moments helps you find the best of Twitter as easily as tapping an icon – regardless of who you follow.”
Users outside the US need a link to access this, however the ones in US can take a look at it as its been rolled out on iOS, web apps and Android platforms.
We’re waiting to get hands on it, though not sure of how one small team in New York would help curate news for all across the globe, and what will be the paradigms on which they would decide what is important for a certain sect and what’s not!
Not very long ago, Facebook had launched a service under the similar name – Moments. It was a minor addition, as it was a to photo-sharing app that aimed to address the problem of getting friends to send each other the photos. Later after mid-June, it started creating videos of photos you’ve shared and you could personalize them and share them back on Facebook. It gave tough competition to a similar service called Flipagram.
Each moment on Twitter has a small piece of news, summarizing the event or happening by Twitter. They can be shared and even embedded.
Twitter has an upper hand right now in deciding what to show as it will be generating the content all by itself. It is reported to be later letting news organisations generate content, which Twitter will curate. For this, it is going to be initially partnering with the Bleacher Report, BuzzFeed, Entertainment Weekly, Fox News, Getty Images, Mashable, Major League Baseball, Nasa, the New York Times, Vogue and the Washington Post.
This is certainly a big step, or rather an attempt to show that it would continue to innovate and add new users to its existing booty. This tab would certainly address Twitter’s biggest problem, that it would work the best for you only if you keep checking Twitter constantly. With Moments, at any moment in the day you can just have an upfront summary of the day, and you don’t have to keep logging back in.
With this, Twitter’s bird has surely got a new pair of wings!
