Before we proceed to the news, let’s all take a moment to remember Twitter ‘Moments’ You will be missed. Alright, intentions out of the way, while this probably would have little impact on actual Twitter functionality, the retirement of Twitter Moments does have with it a certain level of symbolic relevance. It really is the start of a new era on Twitter, one under the wing of Elon Musk.
Hold On A Moment
Is it really time to say goodbye? Well, kind of. Twitter does note that while Moments functionality will cease moving forward, users can still access past Moments. This effectively marks the end of the Moments project, which launched with much fanfare only days after the exit of former Twitter Chief Dick Costolo back in 2015.
Back then, Moments was called the ‘brand new way to look at Tweets’, with Twitter looking to make the feature a big focus, as a means to help highlight the platform’s best offers, without much knowledge of the app or how to navigate it. Back then, following relevant accounts didn’t even matter. A ‘Moment’ was basically a highlight reel of the top daily stories as curated by Twitter’s news team. Initially, interest in the option showed promise, but then steadily declined over time.
In 2017, Twitter backtracked on its dedicated Moments tab, instead replacing it with the ‘Explore’ tab that we all know today. The Explore tab allowed for a more inclusive discovery surface for the top Tweet content. The following year, Twitter removed the capacity to create moments on the mobile app, effectively marking the end of the experiment. Despite that, users have still been able to create moments on desktop, with a respectable number of people still doing so. This has provided a means for these users to create dedicated highlight packages of the top Tweets, which are perfect for making Tweet stat summaries.
Still, the number of people who regularly used the remnants of Moments still wasn’t enough to warrant keeping the option. Last March, Twitter also removed the ability to embed Moments due to low usage. The Elon Musk makeover scenario didn’t help it much, either, with the mass lay-offs also severely impacting Twitter’s curation team. Twitter is now focusing more on its business processes and tools – things that would help improve its revenue generation. It would seem that Twitter’s broader ‘privatization’ has claimed another victim.
The Wrap
It’s not really a huge loss, for many, and the impact of such a removal has been noted to be minimal, however, it’s one of the old features of Twitter that, for a moment, did help it gain some level of relevance above the competition. In the long run, Moments weren’t quite able to live up to its promise. Reforming the concept of what Tweets could have never really worked out, but Elon Musk might just be the man to change that. He’s able to keep the app running, after all, despite it operating on less than half of its original total workforce. Moments were here if only for a moment, but perhaps they stuck around long enough for Musk and his team to learn from and hopefully improve on in the future.
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