One of the many reasons Twitter is still the most unique social platform around is its ability to connect everyone without restrictions. Being able to read and respond to the thoughts and opinions of celebrities, world leaders, politicians, and admired artists brings people one big step closer to a connected world.
Being the number one channel for sharing breaking news, means we all need to follow a lot of global and local news handles to ensure we don’t miss out on something big. The only challenge is that even then, having a rapidly moving timeline means we still might miss something important.
Twitter’s curated feed called Moments, is an attempt to ensure you’re able to experience all current trends through multiple forms of content, including videos, photos, GIFs, Vines, and top mentions. Once you chose to follow a ‘moment’, you’ll be exposed to all the information surrounding that event blended into your timeline – until it ends. Although there have been a few teething issues in terms of image cropping and limited audio when GIFs and video are sharing your feed, it has still made a solid impact in terms of publishing relevant news you may have missed out on otherwise.
So what does this mean for brands if all goes according to plan? Well, it may mean a dip in fan acquisition as more people depend on Moments to keep them up to date. But it also means that brands need to up their game in terms of compelling content that speaks to topical affairs using rich media in a smart way. Moments provides a revived Twitter value that has been missing in recent years, as we crave more and more instant news about the now.
As with most new features on social, Twitter has seen its fair share of criticism with the roll out of ‘Sponsored Moments’, as it defeats the purpose of organic trending topics to rise to the top. However, if used correctly, this could present brands with a good opportunity to still share what’s relevant, but with a clever twist on the brand, ala Oreo.
The user experience looks simple and clean, immersing the viewer with the main story taking up the top half of your mobile screen, and up to 30 moments a day following underneath that. Moments are simple to temporarily follow and explore. We can only assume with Twitter’s new timeline algorithm that perhaps Moments will take the same shape, showing breaking news that is also aligned to your consumption habits.
If the Twitter experience is shifting from following plenty of accounts to simply catching up in one controlled environment, I do hope it won’t be too crowded by the brands with buckets of money and no relevance… With its recent announcement of active users declining in the last quarter, let’s hope Moments is a feature that adds to their growth and reignites their role as a useful breaking news platform.
Written by Wendy Tayler, Account Director, ContentWorks
