Twitter can be a useful tool for following major events, but sometimes it can be tough to find the best Tweets that are being posted. After all, you can’t follow every single person all of the time. That’s where Moments comes in.
Twitter’s newest feature is called Moments, and it aims to help you best follow stories that are happening, regardless of who you’re actually following. Moments will live in a new tab in the Android and iPhone apps from Twitter, and when you hit the tab, you’ll be taken to a list of Moments that are currently unfolding. If you’re searching for more recent events, you can swipe through to find specific topics and view other recent stories.
New! Find the best of Twitter in an instant with Moments: https://t.co/QAKGUSVBbT pic.twitter.com/KAjfkysVKC
— Twitter (@twitter) October 6, 2015
When you hop into a Moment, you’ll be greeted by an introduction with a title and description of what’s going on. You can then start swiping to see large images as well as autoplaying videos and GIFs. You can view more details of a Tweet by tapping on it, and as you’d expect, you can also favorite or Retweet a Tweet.
For events with frequent updates, like sporting events and awards shows, you’ll also have the option of following an event. Doing so will mix Tweets from the event into your main timeline so that you don’t have to keep hopping from your feed to the Moment. When the event is over, your timeline will return to normal.
These Moments are created by Twitter’s curation team as well as partners like Bleacher Report, BuzzFeed, Entertainment Weekly, Fox News, Mashable, MLB, NASA, New York Times, and more.
Moments looks like a huge addition to Twitter. Lots of folks like to use Twitter to follow major events because the service can give you a closer experience than you might be able to get on your own. And while Retweets can help surface Tweets into your timeline that you might not normally see, you may still miss some good posts. Moments can help fix that by surfacing Tweets that are picked out by Twitter’s own team, which should usually have better luck finding quality Tweets than you would have on your own. The ability to follow an event and blend Tweets into your timeline is a nice feature, too, and it’ll be interesting to see how well both that feature and Moments in general work when the next major sporting event or awards show rolls around.
Twitter Moments launches today on Android, iPhone, and desktop in the US. However, if you’re outside the US, Twitter says that you’ll still be able to see a Moment if it’s embedded in a Tweet or Direct Message.
