Now that Jack Dorsey has returned to Twitter as its permanent CEO, his first initiative is to create “moments” that not only grab the eyes of the site’s millions of users, but also potential brands as well.
Ad Age has reported that Twitter has begun rolling out the feature, which will organize certain tweets around live events through special feeds labeled Moments. With it, users can look to see different live-event feeds that are collectively put into categories, including news, entertainment and sports. With one swipe, they can look through these “moments,” including text, photo, videos and Vine clips, that relate to said event.
“What we want to provide is a simplified way for users to get instant value from the platform and literally get the best of what’s happening on Twitter right now,” said Matt Derella, vice president of sales for Twitter. The section “should be a very easy way to catch up with what’s happening in your world with one tap.”
Advertisers will also be able to take advantage of the “Moments” tab through “Promoted” posts, but they will run over a 24 hour period through the various live events, so that they won’t wear out their welcome. Twitter already indicated that it has several brands (which they didn’t name) set to place these ads.
“What it’s actually going to be is a dedicated piece of real estate within the moments guide where a brand can curate a series of different tweets or Vines to actually tell their story,” said Derella. The brands can decide how they want to use these moments, such as tweets that relate to an upcoming film or music festival.
“This is going to be very different than a search text ad,” added Derella. “This is going to be videos, images, and should provide a canvas for brands to move people and shift their hearts and minds.”
Promoted moments can also be shared with other people on Twitter, as well as publishers’ sites outside the site. However, they won’t include the ability to use interactive cards or Periscope lifestreams — at least, not just yet, according to Derella.
The campaign, also named “ProMos”, will begin running at full strength soon.
There is, however, some slight concern that these “moments” will reflect similarities to the ones found on Snapchat. Re/Code recently ran a storythat compared the two, and, some slight text aside, they appear to be pretty much the same thing.
That said, the author, Peter Kafka, explained, “So is it a bad thing that Twitter’s first big move in the New Jack Dorsey Era is a product that works like one of its competitors I don’t think so: Live Stories may be Snapchat’s most promising feature, and if Twitter can integrate its own version into the service, that seems like a plus.”
