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Is Twitter Living in the Moment?

Twitter We’ve seen the reports: Twitter is struggling to fly compared to its advertisement hungry friends sharing the nest (Facebook and Instagram).

I joined Twitter in July 2011 and have been hooked ever since. I enjoy the brevity of it, especially compared to the disarray of my Facebook feed. Maybe my friends are to blame for the chaos that is my Facebook feed, but I find myself spending less personal time on Facebook (client work is another story).

Twitter serves as a great live news platform. I can easily follow a hashtag of a breaking event and get minute-by-minute updates. It is also a storytelling platform, if used correctly. Twitter’s Moments feature is the newest change to the platform and takes on more of a storytelling role.

Moments are still centered on buzzed about topics like the previous Explore feature, but Moments uses images, GIFs and other creative visuals to pull the user in. The tweet itself is minimized, but becomes bigger once clicking on the photo.

In the past week, I’ve watched Twitter Moments about Hillary Clinton visiting a town hall, two brother black bears trying to catch fish and breaking news coming out of Central California. All of these tweets read as a story, coming from different perspectives.

Facebook is the end-all, be-all of social networks for business. It has the largest user base, and it is always creating ways for businesses to be more effective online. Facebook-owned Instagram looks like it is following the same path. The company just opened advertising to any business. It will be interesting to see if Twitter’s Moments increases engagement and user-base, especially for businesses, but I don’t think it will gain its wings anytime soon.

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