Thoughts on Twitter Moments - What You Can Learn

Posted by

Today we’ll talk about the new release by Twitter, actually, the new feature by Twitter called Moments. We’ll talk about what it is. I’ve had a lot of questions from some of our members in our private member area as well about what does this new feature mean? Is there something I can do with it? Is there an opportunity here? Also talk about, on a larger scale, what does this mean for Twitter and the other social networks? Let’s jump right in.

(I recorded this outside and just noticed I started just as a small plan passed overhead… although now that I mentioned that I’m sure it will stick out even more.)

What is Twitter Moments?

The first thing, if you’re not aware of what Moments is. Basically, the way Twitter describes it is it’s a wrap-up or a curated aspect of certain moments, or certain stories. I look at it as certain topics. You’ll see this at the top of your Twitter stream on the actual Twitter website and in various apps. It will be, I guess they call it a lightning bolt, so you click on the lightning bolt, and you’ll see a roundup of various stories, from tweets, to vines, to videos, to animated GIFs. Maybe it’s GIFs, I don’t know. However you want to say that. To tweets, to a lot of different media aspects to a single story.

It could be something that’s breaking in the news. It could be something as obscure as just talking about the Earth, and picture of the Earth. From using it, that’s what I’ve seen. It’s really a mash-up of a bunch of different topics. Right now, it’s curated by humans, or at least a big aspect of it is curated by humans, by some of the Twitter team itself. They’ve actually hired a, I believe, a series of reporters that have a pretty good background on actually reporting on stories.

There’s also some partners too. There’s initial partners that they’ve released it with. What were some of the partners? I think they mentioned … There was some sports partners.

There was some big NASA, New York Times, Entertainment Weekly, Getty Images, Mashable, Bleacher Reports. There’s some big partners that they’ve launched it with.

They have said that they’ve opened it to a small group of partners and they plan to expand it in the future. If you haven’t checked it out, it’s something worth checking out.

Here’s a story that covers this in detail:

http://www.theverge.com/2015/10/6/9457267/twitter-moments-project-lightningA big week for Twitter just got bigger. A day after announcing co-founder Jack Dorsey would return to the company as its CEO, the company is rolling out the product formerly known as Project Lightning to a worldwide audience. Moments, as the new product is called, surfaces the day’s most talked-about stories in a new section of the app. It’s a magazine-like view of Twitter that works even if you’ve never followed a single person. It represents Twitter’s best — and maybe last — hope of attracting a large new base of casual users who want to enjoy the service without having to figure out its unique quirks and lingo. Read more…

Initial Thoughts on Twitter Moments

The initial thoughts on it is I think it’s interesting. What are the other interesting things about it, is that didn’t they already have something like this with their trending feature anyway? Although, what this does is it adds an additional layer of the human element on top of it, which makes it a little bit more of a curation aspect, or a curated aspect of the Twitter platform itself. This goes with a larger issue too. This is something we’ve always stressed with people in our membership and our training and everything we do, is that, look, you’re just like these social networks. You’re just like these platforms. What they’re really looking to do is they’re looking to capture the most valuable aspect of what exists today, which is attention.

One of the ways that we describe it is it’s these social networks, from Youtube, to Facebook, to Twitter, to probably the soon-to-be removed Google Plus, is that you’re in this bus. They’re looking to get you in this bus, and they want to take you, basically, where you are going without you actually getting on another bus. The more that they can create these engaging type of experiences, the more that they can keep you in their walled garden, the more attention they can garner, the more metrics they can get on you, the more actual attention they can get from you, and really that’s what they’re after. That’s what these social networks are after.

The Biggest Issue Twitter Has

For the longest time, one of the biggest issues you consistently hear from Twitter is that people don’t know what to do. After you start using it, you understand how Twitter works. You understand some of the rules. But it’s not like Facebook. With Facebook, it’s pretty straight forward on how you use it. It’s your family is there, your friends are there. It’s really straight forward. Their interface, and there’s no verbiage you have to learn. You’re pretty much … It’s just like communicating in a messaging app. There’s a lot more features, a lot more visual aspect to it, but the end of the day, you’re really just in a update status app.

Twitter has its own retweets, its own verbiage. It has its text limits. There’s a lot more pieces going on here. Plus, the stream of following someone and when you try to discover content, or discover tweets, and just understand how conversations are happening has always been a challenge to Twitter. I think this move is one of those opportunities, or one of those dipping their toe in to see if they can make a more engaging platform for someone who isn’t as initiated in how to interact with Twitter as some of these other platforms are. You seen a lot of moves, especially on Facebook’s side, to bring in their native news, to bring in news right into the feed, to really keep people within the Twitter app itself, from actually watching videos, to actually reading stories, to really just making sure that they’re not leaving the Facebook application to engage with content, to read content, to comment on content.

Twitter Trying to Figure Out Twitter

I think this is a move by Twitter to do somewhat of the same thing. They’re looking for, “How can we compete in that same space?” The same way as if you’re in Youtube and the Youtube video ends and they show you, what is it, 12 different videos, or 10 different videos, to go on further. There’s always a recommendation. That’s why what we stress consistently is the same thing that these social networks, these platforms, are looking for attention. It’s the same thing, that if you’re employing content marketing, you should be looking for the same as yourself. You should be really looking for, “How can I garner attention from my target market? How can I keep them on my platform?”

I think that this latest Moments move, I think it is an interesting tool. It’s an interesting … Actually, it’s a pretty engaging experience so far, from what I’ve seen. It’s a little bit of a weird mash-up, if you look at it, because there might be a breaking story of something that’s maybe not that enlightening, let’s say a terrible event in the news, mixed up to pictures of cats on your same screen, which, in the experience aspect …

In the display aspect it makes sense, because it’s just there in the Moments tab, but in the experience aspect of what’s actually going on in the world, it’s, I won’t say jarring, it’s just an interesting feel, because typically you don’t go to … Let’s say you go to your favorite news site right now, and there’s a major event going on, like flooding for instance. The whole main page is typically devoted to that, and they’re not intermingling a lot of different stories. You don’t see sports right next to flooding and other stuff like that. You can go to the sports section, but it’s very hierarchical in how the stories are presented.

It’s not like that with Moments, so that’ll be interesting to see how the engagement is there. I think it’s an interesting move. Is there anything that you can do right now, if you’re not one of thee partners? Not really. I could say that you probably want to watch it, because maybe what might happen is maybe they might open the platform up for people to create moments themselves.

Maybe these Moments could be embeddable. Imagine that, the same way that you can embed a tweet, that you could embed maybe a … The same way that you embed a timeline too, I could say, you can embed a moment, that is a curated aspect of those various elements that you’re seeing in these moments tabs right now.

http://www.marketwatch.com/video/five-things-to-know-about-twitter-moments/619A9523-391E-45B6-BF34-6A297A48055F.htmlA day after announcing Jack Dorsey as its CEO, the social network unveiled a new product called Moments. Here are five things to know about Moments. Photo: Getty. Posted October 7, 2015. Latest Video. Play All. Putin as Robin Hood and Others in … Five Things to Know About Twitter Moments

 

I think it’s something to watch. I think it’s something interesting. One of the things that we’re consistently looking at in our tool as well is how do we encourage creating a wide range of content, wide range of curated content, for instance? If you’re creating a story, if you’re even doing a unique piece of content, how can you pull in tweets to actually make that more relevant? How can you maybe pull in videos? How can you pull in maybe a couple pieces of curated piece of content that relate to what you’re writing about?

Here’s What You Can Learn…

Even if you’re just doing raw curated content, how could you actually pull in additional tweets or videos or other aspects from other social networks, and embed it into your content so that you really have a dynamic piece of content there. You have your own thoughts, but then you’re pulling in from other people’s thoughts. You’re pulling in from social. Not only do you have something that’s telling a narrative, but you also have something that is engaging in social media, but it’s actually visually appealing as well, because you’re pulling from so many different sources.

I think that that’s something that’s interesting because it really does give you this different media aspects, from vines, to images, to videos, to tweets, to conversations. I think it’s something interesting, but what I would say is that you could do the same thing yourself. You could, without Moments, you could … You could do the same type of aspect yourself without doing Moments. Just look at your blog, look at your site, look at the content you’re producing, and what can I learn from these moments? What can I … Can I employ the same type of thing in my own content? I think that’s a very powerful aspect, that people can actually employ right now, that you can learn from this.

Does this show weakness or strength on Twitter’s side?

My personal opinion is that it shows a little bit of still grasping around for what Twitter is, where there’s a clear delineation in Facebook, what Facebook is. People don’t have a question there. I think Facebook is really having problems monetizing. They’re really having problems really understanding, “How do we grow? How do we stay …” I still contend that the big of Twitter is power users, and they haven’t really found a way to go beyond power users. Yeah, it’s still in the, I’d say the mindscape of the overall culture, but just because it’s in the mindscape of the overall culture doesn’t mean that they have the same usage, they have the same stickiness that something like Facebook does, or even Youtube.

http://www.wired.com/2015/10/moments-twitters-best-chance-yet-saving-business/Launched with much fanfare yesterday, Moments reveals the videos, photos, and tweets behind news stories and events as they unfold on Twitter and Twitter-owned products such as Periscope and Vine. Moments are currently being curated by an editorial … Moments Is Twitter’s Best Chance Yet at Saving Its Business

 

I think, in some ways, I’m not saying it shows a big weakness, but I don’t … It’s, in some aspects, it’s very close to trending. It’s almost the same thing as trending, only it has a more of a curated aspect. I think it’ll be interesting to see where Twitter goes here in the next 12 months, especially as they really look to say, “How can we expand our platform?” Are they going to expand their actual message size above 140? What are they going to do to really keep their platform more of a … Keep people within their walled garden, so to say? That’s really my initial thoughts on that.

Once again, the big takeaway I would say is that with Moments, you’re getting a very dynamic view of different content around a subject matter. Take that as inspiration to be able to do that on your own site, to do that on your own platform. That’s what I would suggest. That’s all. That’s my initial thoughts. I’ll send this out in email via our private member group. If you want to learn more about Curation Suite as well, most likely you’re listening to this on curationsuite.com, definitely check out … We’re a content curation platform. We’re about 1 or 2 weeks away from our official release of version 2.0, so you’ll definitely want to check out as well. That’s all. I’ll look forward to seeing you in the next audio.