Twitter Moments have just been released, not to be confused with Facebook Moments
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So apparently ‘moments’ are a thing. Facebook has had something called “Moments” for some time now, but it looks like Twitter has a similar, but different, idea that collates relevant tweets about certain events together. It’s not clear if the curation of these Moments is via an algorithm or someone who actually exists, but these Twitter Moments are supposed to be the “best of what’s happening on Twitter in an instant”. To get to it, if you use Twitter on Android, iOS or desktop and are in the US, you should see a new lightning tab titled “Moments” – from here, you’ll be able to scroll through relevant tweets or other Moments to see the day’s happenings. In fact, Twitter has some dot points on how it thinks you should use Moments:
- When you click into a Moment, you’re taken to an introduction with a title and description.
- Start swiping to dive right into the story, with immersive full-bleed images and autoplaying videos, Vines, and GIFs.
- A single tap gives you a fuller view of the Tweet, which you can favorite, Retweet, and more. A double tap lets you instantly favorite the Tweet.
- The progress bar at the bottom indicates how much more each Moment has to offer.
- Swiping up or down dismisses the Moment and takes you back to the guide.
- At the end of a Moment, click the share button to Tweet your thoughts, and send it out to your followers.
It’s a nice idea, but obviously not nice enough to release to the whole world right now. What do you think about Twitter Moments? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.
Source: Twitter via Droid-life
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Twitter’s Project Lightning debuts as Moments
Millions of people around the world use Twitter as their source of news. But today, with the introduction of Moments, Twitter actually wants to serve you curated news about what is happening in real-time. This is Twitter’s way of being a creative storyteller.
Please allow Twitter to explain how Moments works:
Tapping on the new lightning bolt tab on your phone opens a list of Moments that matter now. As new stories emerge throughout the day, we continue to update this list. Looking for more? You can also swipe through to topics including “Entertainment” and “Sports” to find more stories from the past few days.
Twitter’s Moments are mostly put together by the company’s own curation team; however, there are multiple partners to provide Moments in their own ways. Bleacher Report, Buzzfeed, Entertainment Weekly, FOX News, Getty Images, Mashable, MLB, NASA, The New York Times, Vogue, and the Washington Post are all among Twitter’s partners creating Moments that include images, GIFs, Vines, or videos.
Check out the Moment for the ongoing MLB American League Wild Card Game:
MLB wild-card: Astros vs. Yankees
http://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
Based on the performance of Moments over time, Twitter may not need to second-guess moving on from a Flipboard purchase. It very well may have an in-house solution to deliver events to users without being mixed in with other topics.
Moments is live right now for users of Twitter on Android, iOS, and web devices in the United States. People outside of the United States can still interact with a Moment if it is packed into a tweet, direct message, or embedded location. Twitter says that Moments’ features are heading to additional locations in the coming weeks and months.
Source: Twitter
Come comment on this article: Twitter’s Project Lightning debuts as Moments
Twitter’s curated Moments slows down the newsfeed for new users
Twitter moves at the speed of human consciousness. With our attention span more and more resembling that of a gnat, that’s pretty quick. That’s partially the reason that the social network is finding it difficult for new users grasp. Breaking news on the service has a life cycle of about an hour or two before the collective moves on to another topic. Meanwhile Facebook will keep a topic in a person’s newsfeed for days with its algorithm. While Twitter’s not going to start controlling your feed (at least not yet) what it has done is add Moments, a new feature at makes keeping up with the trending topics and news items easier. Slideshow-325522
“We started by saying, ‘what would it take for folks who want Twitter to work for them to see great content immediately with no work?’” said Madhu Muthukumar, Twitter product manager. The internal answer ended up being Moments (a venture formerly known as Project Lightning), a feature that curates the day’s trending topics and news items into slideshows of image and video tweets with the occasional text posting. “It’s a way to explore content on the platform and not feel like you have to commit to following these people,” said Muthukumar.
Beginning today a new tab with a lightning bolt will start rolling out to the latest iOS, Android clients and on Twitter.com in the United States. Tapping that bolt will drop you into today’s biggest news or topic. The lead topic is usually highlighted with a video or animated GIF. Taping on it drops you into a timeline of multimedia and text tweets about the topic from trusted sources. Swipe left to see additional posts with a while line at the bottom that can scrub back and forth within an story. When you’re down you can share the Moment, close it, or select another story.
Like Vine, you can double tap on a tweet within a moment to fav it. Or you can single tap to bring up the retweet and fav options. In addition to sharing individual posts, an entire Moment can be shared and embedded.
Users can also tap a follow button in a tweet based on a news event that drops relevant tweets from accounts you may or may not follow into their timeline. It’s like you’ve followed a curated list for a limited time. When the event ends, the accounts are unfollowed. It’s a good way to keep track of the information coming out of a sporting event or news item without delving into hashtags that can be hijacked or having to follow accounts that are only useful to you for a limited time.
At launch the feature is curated by a small team at Twitter and select partners including MLB, Buzzfeed, Getty Images and NASA. But, the company also plans on giving everyone the ability to build Moments. They can be shared on your feed or on your site or Facebook page. It’ll be Twitter’s version of tiny blog posts with users curating their own feeds with politics, cute animals and news. Mostly, it’ll be cute animals. But curating and sharing is easier than writing and that could appeal to folks that just want to show the a bunch of cool stuff with very little effort.
New Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey made a point during a recent quarterly earnings call to talk about how confusing the service could be for new users. This included talk of questioning the reverse chronological order of stream. Moments doesn’t upend how Twitter works, but it does offer an alternative way to interact with service. A way that doesn’t intimidate new folks and gives long-time users the option to step back from the noise and see what’s happening in the world.
Twitter hasn’t created a less-than-stellar algorithm the way Facebook did. Instead its trying to create a Flipboard-like experience in its official apps. Moments is a set of training wheels that keeps new accounts from bailing once they realize that Twitter is the Tour de France of information. It’ll be up to those new folks if they want to graduate to the real race or if they’ll stick with leisurely pace of curated posts. Either way, if they stay, Twitter wins.
Source: Twitter
Twitter removes ‘interim’ tag in naming Dorsey CEO
After a three-month run serving as the interim CEO for Twitter, founder Jack Dorsey has been named the permanent CEO for the social media platform. Dorsey took over on an interim basis earlier this year after Dick Costolo decided to part ways from the company. In addition to his role as CEO for Twitter, Dorsey will continue as the CEO for online payment company Square, which he founded in 2009.
Dorsey took to his Twitter account this morning to share some thoughts regarding the appointment and the future for Twitter:
Both companies have strong businesses and are well positioned to grow their impact in the world. I will do whatever it takes to ensure that.
— Jack (@jack) October 5, 2015
http://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
One of the steps that Dorsey plans to take is to improve the way Twitter works so more users feel comfortable accessing the service. Dorsey could turn to some of the third-party apps available for Twitter users for inspiration as the company works to improve their apps and platform.
Our work forward is to make Twitter easy to understand by anyone in the world, and give more utility to the people who love to use it daily!
— Jack (@jack) October 5, 2015
http://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
Besides improvements to the app, it seems likely that Twitter and Square will continue to strengthen the bond between the companies and services, like the initiative announced during the interim period that enables political campaigns to use a combination of Square and Twitter to make contributions to candidates.
Along with dropping the interim tag from Dorsey’s title, Twitter also announced Adam Bain, who was the company’s head of revenue, will be moving up to serve as the chief operating officer. Costolo completed his separation from the company as he officially stepped down from the Twitter board. In his role as CEO, Dorsey will not get paid by Twitter, though he does own a significant stake in the company.
Where would you like to see Dorsey lead either Twitter or Square moving forward?
Come comment on this article: Twitter removes ‘interim’ tag in naming Dorsey CEO
Jack Dorsey is back in charge of Twitter
Jack Dorsey has announced that he is re-taking the reins of the social network that he helped build. Dorsey had been the interim CEO since it was announced that previous CEO Dick Costolo was stepping down in June of this year. Twitter created a search committee after Costolo’s departure that included former Twitter CEO, Evan Williams, to find a new boss. Turns out that the figure was there, all the time. In addition, Dorsey will remain as CEO of Square, the mobile-payments firm he founded when he left Twitter. This will be Dorsey’s second term as CEO, the first abruptly ending in 2008 when he was replaced as CEO by Ev Williams.
Dorsey will have his hands full as the company struggles to grow its active user base. During its last quarterly results, Dorsey noted that the company needs to do a better job explaining what Twitter actually does. It’s been exploring ways keep new users engaged. These include experimenting with surfacing trending news items and buy buttons. As he explains in his 140-character missive, Dorsey will be the CEO of both Twitter and Square, with Adam Bain, Twitter’s current head of revenue and partnerships becoming the social network’s COO. At the same time, former CEO Dick Costolo has resigned from Twitter’s board and is no longer with the company.
We are naming @adambain COO of Twitter, we’re working to change the composition of our Board, and I will serve as CEO of Twitter and Square!
— Jack (@jack) October 5, 2015
If Dorsey can figure out how to get new users to stay with the service is yet to be determined. What is certain is that the market thinks his new job as CEO is a good idea. The company’s stock jumped over five percent earlier today when Recode broke the story that Twitter would name Dorsey as it’s new CEO before the official announcement.
1/ delighted for @jack and the team and excited for the future of Twitter. https://t.co/hY7ZEttA2t
— dick costolo (@dickc) October 5, 2015
2/ @jack is a calm and thoughtful leader. He is bold, forthright, decisive, and the team loves working with him. https://t.co/2M3y7oEB45
— dick costolo (@dickc) October 5, 2015
3/ as I step off the board, two reminders: those banging pots and pans outside Twitter know the least about what’s going on inside Twitter
— dick costolo (@dickc) October 5, 2015
[Image credit: AFP PHOTO / JUSTIN TALLIS]
Source: SEC
Edward Snowden’s Twitter account generated 47 GB of notification emails
Edward Snowden created a Twitter account a few days ago, but he forgot to turn off email notifications that Twitter likes to send out. Well, it turns out when you’re one of the most popular men on the internet, this creates a ton of email.
Snowden was notified for every follow, favorite, retweet, and DM that he received, which generated about 47 GB of emails. That’s a lot of junk mail to wade through.
If there are any other huge celebrities without a Twitter account, keep this in mind if you ever make one.
source: Edward Snowden (Twitter)
via: Engadget
Come comment on this article: Edward Snowden’s Twitter account generated 47 GB of notification emails
Twitter noob Snowden gets hammered with 47GB of notification emails
What happens when one of the most wanted men in the world joins Twitter and forgets to disable email notifications? 47GB of emails. As you might expect, Edward Snowden was immediately inundated with followers, replies, favorites, DMs and retweets — all of which came with individual alerts to the NSA whistleblower’s email account. For reference, Snowden currently sits at 1.26 million followers (and counting) and his first tweet earlier this week has been favorited 110,000 times with 120,000 retweets. Hopefully his phone was in silent mode.
[Image credit: AP Photo/Charles Platiau, Pool]
I forgot to turn off notifications. Twitter sent me an email for each: Follow Favorite Retweet DM 47 gigs of notifications. #lessonlearned
— Edward Snowden (@Snowden) October 1, 2015
Via: The Verge
Source: Twitter
Outlook on the web borrows Facebook’s Like and Twitter’s @mention
Microsoft is giving Outlook on the web a couple of familiar social media-flavored features. First, it’s adding a thumbs up on every email, which you can click on the reading pane. That gives you a way to publicly “Like” or show ideas support, particularly for school/work group messages — if someone else likes the email you sent, you’ll get a notification. The other one is obviously inspired by Twitter’s @mentions: when you want to call someone’s attention in the body of an email, simply type @ to open up your directory and list of frequent contacts. If the person wasn’t originally in the group message, his email address will automatically be added in the To: box.
You can enjoy both features soon if you have an Office 365 commercial subscription that comes with Outlook on the web. Office 365 First Release customers will get the Like feature sometime today and @mentions by mid-October. Everybody else, on the other hand, will have to wait until late October to see a thumbs up icon in their emails and until mid-November to @mention somebody in a group message.
Source: Microsoft Office
Twitter may relax is trademark 140-character limit
Anyone who has ever tweeted in his lifetime knows the struggle of expressing their thoughts in Twitter’s 140-characters limit. More often than not, it is the English language that takes the beating with most of us tweeting away in SMS language – something that makes all of us look like middle school teens. Well, not anymore! If a re/code report is to be believed, Twitter is building a new product that will allows users to type and share longer tweets.
Although there are already some products that let users post blocks of text by converting them into images, Twitter’s new feature or product may allow users to actually write long-form tweets. Sources familiar to the development say that the debate has been going on internally at Twitter as to whether or not to tweak the trademark 140 character barrier.
Lately, the company has been looking for ways to provide more room for users to type by relaxing its character limit. It is considering to discount usernames and urls from the word count. If you remember, Twitter recently brought ‘retweet with comment’ option as well as direct messages feature that gave people some relaxation from the character limit.
Come comment on this article: Twitter may relax is trademark 140-character limit
Twitter to Expand 140-Character Limit With New Product
Twitter is planning to introduce a new solution that will allow users to create tweets that exceed 140 characters in length, reports Re/code. Twitter will implement longer tweets through a new product, but it is not yet clear what that product will look like or how it will work.
There are existing services designed to let users publish long-form content on Twitter, like TwitLonger, which directs users to a website to read a full tweet, or OneShot, which lets users post images of text, but Twitter may have a better solution in mind for its own product.
Twitter is also said to be considering removing links and usernames from character counts, which would also expand the allowed length of tweets.
In addition to the long-form product, execs have been openly discussing the idea of tweaking how Twitter measures its 140-character limit by removing things like links and user handles from the count, multiple sources say. In the past, Twitter has tinkered with the limit in other ways. Twitter Cards are still beholden to the 140-character limit but are intended to help people (and advertisers) share lots of information, and Twitter added a “retweet with comment” option in April to give people more room to comment on tweets they share.
Twitter has already been making moves towards expanding its signature limitations. Earlier this year, the company officially removed the 140-character limit from Direct Messages, allowing for unrestricted conversation much like other chat and messaging apps.
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