Twitter launched Moments October 2015, which was a way to aggregate tweets in a graphically immersive way. The company described it as a “visual pulse of what is happening around the world.” It was initially launched in the United States and slowly released to other countries in phases. In Kenya, Twitter released moments in an update released in February 2016.
Twitter is set to open moments to a select group of influencers, brands, or partners giving them the ability to curate tweets around major events. This feature will then be rolled out to other users across the world. Twitter moments have been limited to a select group of its partners including Buzzfeed, Mashable, NASA, Washington Post The New York Times, Vogue and others. Twitter’s editorial team has also been widely involved in the curating.
Moments will likely be housed within the Twitter app but the company is yet to announce how this will take place. The opening up of Moments is seen as a move to compete with Snapchat stories or the recently launched Instagram stories giving users a new and dynamic way to tell their stories. With a larger number of moments, it will be easy for users to see the funny tweets or memes or even important announcements made that they missed from different spheres.
