Twitter’s new feature, Moments, is intended to help people find things more easily. In fact, it’s supposed to help us find the best of Twitter. Here’s Twitter’s explanation:
Every day, people share hundreds of millions of Tweets. 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. We know finding these only-on-Twitter moments can be a challenge.
I checked out the News section of Moments, and found some interesting stories. Clicking through, I found — the best of Twitter?
News is not the only option. There’s also Sports, Entertainment, and Fun. Under Fun, I found cats in Halloween costumes and pretty pictures of fall leaves. You can still see the Trends, and you can customize a bit.
For me, the great thing about Twitter is that I can follow the people who curate great news on specific topics of interest to me, as well as people I know and find interesting. Hashtags help us find discussions on timely topics, and we can dip into the stream and see what people we’re following are talking about when we need a mental break.
Live tweeting with a hashtag is a handy way to share an event or a TV program, to gather questions from a crowd or to hold a large conversation on a subject of shared interest, pointing out articles and multimedia others will find interesting or challenging.
Moments seems much less valuable.
Are there too few sites where we can find cat costumes and badly spelled vitriol? Do we really need Twitter to find us more?
So far there are no sponsored posts in Moments, but they’ll be coming along soon.
Twitter’s goal, apart from additional advertising space, is to reach out to people who don’t already use Twitter — some 72% of American adults. Perhaps Moments will be more useful for them. Forbes suggests that the upcoming Democratic candidates debate will be a good test of the quality and value of Moments.
Will you give it a try?
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