Twitter to turn conversations into curated connected “Moments”

Citizens of the web who love themselves a little bit of socialising may find Twitter has a new box for them to explore today, as the local arm switches on a new section.

If you’re an eager Tweeter, the next you open up the app on your smartphone or tablet, you may find it looks a little different.

Specifically, there may be a new box at the bottom of the screen called “Moments”.

A little different from your regular Tweetstream, this is Twitter’s way of communicating what it sees as important and happening out of the Twitter universe, not just your subscribed feed.

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Worth noting is that this isn’t just a “best of” from the world of Twitter, because while you can search for a topic and see the most read tweets, Moments is handled by a team of editors out of Twitter.

Australia isn’t the first place to see the Moments feature, but it is the fourth place, joining the UK, USA, and Brazil as locations that support Twitter’s Moments feed.

“Twitter is absolutely part of the national conversation in Australia, across everything from sports and TV to politics and local news,” said Luke Hopewell, Twitter’s Curation Lead for Moments. “Previously, you may have felt you could only keep up by following thousands of accounts; with Moments, we do that for you.”

“It’s all about making it simpler and easier than ever before to get the very most out of Twitter,” he said.

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To do this, you start with Twitter’s Moments tab and take a browse through the various Moments stories, which will load up images and status updates from users connecting these moments together.

In a way, a Moment is like an advanced version a conversation linked by hashtags. While you might normally scroll up and down that conversation, Moments lets you swipe left and right and see a more visual version of that story.

Twitter has said that while its curation team is handling the creation of these moments, others will be continued by partners including ABC News, BuzzFeed Australia, AFL, and the NRL, with the list expanding in the future, though you’ll be able to follow any Moment as well.

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“Moments are updated as new information or great Tweets become available,” said Hopewell.

“For stories that update very frequently — where it’s critical to know what’s happening minute by minute, like live sporting events, a breaking news event, or awards show — you’ll see an option to follow the Moment,” Hopewell said on Twitter’s blog this week, adding that “this blends the Tweets directly into your timeline and you can keep track of the latest updates in real time without having to tap back and forth between tabs.”

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It does need to be said that you don’t need to click into Moments if you don’t want to, and you can continue browsing Twitter the way you normally would, scrolling from tweet to tweet if need be. In fact, while the web browser, mobile, and tablet versions of the Twitter service have received Moments, the desktop app for Mac appears to be missing the tab.

That means you’ll need to go to your mobile if you’re after a more multimedia heavy version of Twitter, where you’ll find it in a Moments tab.