Ear­li­er this month, Twit­ter unveiled Moments, a curat­ed news feed, which high­lights col­lec­tions of top tweets around live events, news sto­ries, and trend­ing points of dis­cus­sion around the world. Is the fea­ture, which at present is over­seen by a spe­cial­ist team of Twit­ter staff, reflec­tive of a grow­ing con­sumer demand for instant, high-qual­i­ty, and curat­ed con­tent? And what can Moments tell us about how con­sumers are view­ing online media?

In the 10 years or so since the plat­for­m’s con­cep­tion, one of the defin­ing ele­ments of Twit­ter’s suc­cess has been their unwa­ver­ing sim­plic­i­ty. For much of the last decade, the busi­ness has revolved around a clear USP, nev­er stray­ing too far from its core val­ue propo­si­tion of enabling users to share mes­sages of 140 char­ac­ters or less.

Moments, inci­den­tal­ly, is prob­a­bly one of the most sig­nif­i­cant changes to the micro-blog­ging plat­form in years. Until now, con­tent on Twit­ter has been dri­ven organ­i­cal­ly. With the excep­tion of the plat­for­m’s paid adver­tis­ing fea­ture intro­duced in 2010, tweets, retweets, and favorites have been the social cur­ren­cy on the plat­form for indi­vid­u­als and brands.

Moments presents a dif­fer­ent propo­si­tion.

Until now, the way con­tent is grouped or orga­nized on Twit­ter has been based on the net­works that users fol­lowed, and the inter­ac­tions they had with oth­er users. Moments offers a view that col­lates media or sto­ries from around the web in a way that any user can access. Accord­ing to the Twit­ter blog, Moments offers “the best of what’s hap­pen­ing on Twit­ter in an instant.”

Reducing The Barrier To Entry

Con­tent on Moments will be curat­ed and over­seen by a spe­cial­ist pub­lish­ing team at Twit­ter, and many ana­lysts have com­ment­ed that in this way Moments has been designed to engage a group of Twit­ter users who may have failed to be inspired by the plat­form.

Much has been made of the fact that appar­ent­ly “near­ly 1 bil­lion peo­ple have tried Twit­ter, but cur­rent­ly only a quar­ter of them actu­al­ly log in once per month.” It’s rea­son­able to assume that one rea­son Twit­ter expe­ri­ences this rate of aban­don­ment is because of the bar­ri­er to entry – where with­out build­ing up a net­work of peo­ple or orga­ni­za­tions to fol­low, con­tent that a user expe­ri­ences on the plat­form is extreme­ly lim­it­ed.

With Moments, this all changes with a sim­ple click of the Light­ning tab:

From there a user gains instant access to excit­ing, social­ized con­tent that is being pub­lished on the plat­form at that very moment.

Engaging Lost Users

Twit­ter users who aban­don the plat­form are “more like­ly to be under the age of 35, and are 35 per­cent more like­ly to live with their par­ents,” accord­ing to a study by con­sumer insights plat­form, Civic­Science.

With Moments, Twit­ter hopes that they can appeal to key demo­graph­ics such as this seg­ment of mil­len­ni­als by pro­vid­ing them with a way to access con­tent that is not depen­dent on hav­ing an estab­lished net­work on the plat­form.

Civic­Science’s find­ings, lapsed Twit­ter users are:

• More like­ly to be under age 35, and are 35 per­cent more like­ly to still live with mom and dad.
• More like­ly to be female (num­ber­ing at 57 per­cent, as opposed to the 43 per­cent of lapsed users who are male).
• 148 per­cent more like­ly to have aban­doned Snapchat and 209 per­cent more like­ly to have aban­doned Insta­gram.
• Not as addict­ed to their dig­i­tal devices, com­pared to active Twit­ter users.
• More than 33 per­cent more like­ly to be “sec­ond screen­ing” while watch­ing TV, but not nec­es­sar­i­ly post­ing about the show.
• Not as like­ly as active Twit­ter users to enjoy telling oth­ers about new brands or tech­nol­o­gy.

How Moments Offers Twitter Users Something New

Moments marks a fun­da­men­tal change in the social media net­work, as it’s the first time con­tent pub­lished on the plat­form will be curat­ed by a team of pub­lish­ing pro­fes­sion­als. Moments seeks to orga­nize con­tent for users and reduce the bar­ri­er for entry to the most excit­ing con­tent on the plat­form at any par­tic­u­lar moment, thus serv­ing a com­mu­ni­ty of users that the plat­form has tra­di­tion­al­ly failed to engage.

The final pre­sen­ta­tion is more aligned with that of a rich-media news site, infused with the respon­sive­ness and social effer­ves­cence that makes Twit­ter such a pop­u­lar and pow­er­ful plat­form.

Will Moments achieve its goals? We’ll find out in the com­ing months. but what we’ve seen of Twit­ter’s new fea­ture sug­gests that it could be a suc­cess.

Here are three ways Twit­ter’s Moments offers users some­thing new, and to an extent, these can be seen as qual­i­ties that are applic­a­ble to the way con­sumers are increas­ing­ly seek­ing con­tent online.

1. Instantaneous & Responsive

Moments offers users instan­ta­neous respon­sive­ness, to top­ics that are trend­ing glob­al­ly.

Twit­ter has long-estab­lished a rep­u­ta­tion for time-split­ting news updates. How­ev­er, where this poten­tial often falls short is that users do not nec­es­sar­i­ly have access to those mes­sages.

Those users who haven’t yet built up their own net­works are a typ­i­cal exam­ple. They should ben­e­fit from Moments’ media-rich views, regard­less of the size or qual­i­ty of their net­works.

2. Community-Driven Content Can Be Hugely Powerful

Unlike con­tent on news or media sites con­tent is social­ized and cre­at­ed by the Twit­ter com­mu­ni­ty. This offers users the abil­i­ty to expe­ri­ence angles on a par­tic­u­lar sto­ry that per­haps isn’t being cov­ered by the media.

A case in point: When Michael Brown was killed by a police offi­cer it was via Twit­ter that jour­nal­ist David Carr first heard about the shoot­ing after his feed appar­ent­ly “explode[d] with videos, pho­tographs and mes­sages”. At the time, the media was still rehash­ing the details of Robin Williams death, but out­rage around Brown’s death rose under the hash­tag #Fer­gu­son start­ing what was to become one of the most con­tro­ver­sial news sto­ries of the year.

On Twit­ter, sto­ries take a life of their own. The plat­form remains one of the most pow­er­ful ways for peo­ple who may not have the ampli­fi­ca­tion and the sup­port of the media to be heard. This means Twit­ter is often a forum for con­tro­ver­sial news sto­ries, which is a role where the plat­form is find­ing a groove.

3. Curated For Quality & Depth

Moments will be curat­ed by a team of edi­tors who have the unen­vi­able task of whit­tling down the half a bil­lion or so tweets sent each day to find the most inter­est­ing con­tent about events and sto­ries that are hap­pen­ing at that very moment.

Any one par­tic­u­lar moment will have a vari­ety of sources. Imag­ine fol­low­ing a storm or an earth­quake and hav­ing the abil­i­ty to see both the media cov­er­age, and live updates from peo­ple on the ground. With Moments users can expe­ri­ence this rich­ness of per­spec­tive.

Do you think moments sig­nals a chang­ing demand for the way con­sumers are view­ing con­tent?