In July, it was reported that Twitter is launching a curated news service that was previously named as Project Lightning . Periscope’s CEO, Kayvon Beykpour leaked that information to the Telegraph back then and described it as a visual pulse of what is happening around the world. Twitter finally announced the feature recently, calling it Moments as previously announced and it is exactly what the Periscope CEO explained it would be. Moments is being rolled out in the US on the Android and iPhone apps as well as the web with other countries to follow soon.
Moments has a convenient lightning bolt which when clicked, a user is able to access the latest stories that are composed of full screen images, autoplaying videos, GIFS and Vines. The moments are grouped into various categories for users to easily sift through. If one decides to tap on a specific moment, you can see the full view of the tweet and a progress bar at the bottom indicates the progress of the particular moment. Swiping up or down will take you back to the Moments page so that you can view others. In a case where a story that is updated constantly like a football match, there is an option to follow the moment which enables you to be updated in real time by integrating the tweets in your timeline.
Twitter is wasting no time in rolling out advertisements to Moments. Advertisers on moments have a channel on Moments for 24 hours, where they can curate tweets, video and other content. Moments closely resembles promoted tweets but with moments, users are able to add more photos, videos and tweets to build a better story. Twitter is currently hiring curators to ensure it delivers high quality moments.
