Twitter Seizes the Moment to Compete with Snapchat

moments combo twitterFrom Instagrams new Stories feature to Facebooks camera-first layout trial, it feels like everyone is chasing Snapchats popularity with new innovations, and Twitter is no exception. The social network is expanding its Moments feature to compete with rival efforts.

Moments currently serves as a curated feed maintained by Twitters editors, presenting key news, sports and entertainment stories by selecting key tweets and associated media, creating a slideshow similar to Snapchat and Instagrams Stories features.

Over the next few weeks, however, a few companies and influencers will be chosen by Twitter to expand the Moments platform, highlighting issues and stories they feel are worth wider attention.

Moments created by individuals or companies can be shared using tweets, and will also be found via a dedicated button on their profiles, linking users directly to the blend of video, audio and images.

The Moments feed on Twitter will, for the near future, be unaffected by these changes, but Twitter has suggested that eventually the ability to create a Moment based on a topic or event will be opened up to all users.

While this change will see Moments closely mirroring existing capabilities on Snapchat and Instagram, one key difference is that Moments are controlled by the user, who can scroll forward or back at their own pace, rather than the set progression of Stories.

Expanding Moments should serve to encourage photo and video use on Twitter, and help create longer linked narratives using the microblogging service, but whether that is enough to help the struggling platform will remain to be seen.

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