This week on The Tech Dump, Microsoft unveiled a slew of new hardware that will be coming out over the next few months.
But as I cannot do anything but speculate on the new hardware, I’ve decided to wait until I can play with it before I blog about it. Instead I want to talk about something I can report on today which is still unfolding as I write this — Twitter Moments.
In response to many user complaints that Twitter is too complicated or confusing to use, Twitter is rolling out a new feature built right into its official Android and iOS apps and desktop site called Moments.

(My first sight of the new Moments section on the official Twitter Android app)
The goal of the new section is to bring the biggest news and trends of the day into one single place while suggesting new accounts to follow. Basically, Twitter wants to make finding accounts you care about easier than ever before by giving you glimpses of what different accounts post.
As you can see in the screenshot, the new section has the “Today” tab which acts as a conglomeration of top news from all different categories. Besides the top stories section, there are only four other categories to choose from: news, sports, entertainment and fun.
The media found in these four sections can range from news articles to gifs to vines and practically anything in between. This allows people to see all of the media capabilities that Twitter has to offer in their app on social network as a whole.
While the new feature appears to be very thin now, I can see many more categories being added over time and I hope they do as the few sections barely apply to me; however, if more functionality is added to Moments, I can see it becoming a daily reference point to me.
The question remaining for the new feature is, will new users be attracted to the network because of this tab? It is too soon to tell as the feature is brand new as of this writing.
Looking at Moments now, the ceiling for success lies in the new addition’s potential. If Twitter works at making Moments a wider-reaching amalgamation for news, Twitter could become the news center for user it has always been trying to be.
Twitter is personally my favorite social network because it walks the line of connecting with friends and keeping up with news and trends of the day. If Moments can attract new users to the network and eases them into curating a newsfeed they find to be relevant and beneficial, Twitter could easily become the top used social network.
As of now, many people in the public find it daunting to learn a new social network after adapting to Facebook. When I try to get down to why many of my friends do not use the social network, I consistently hear, “I do not know what Twitter is for.”
Moments attempts to amend that problem by showing potential users what the network is for — news.
News has always been Twitter’s bread and butter because users can follow bands and corporations to keep up with the latest on what they are doing and Moments attempts to streamline news consumption for users that find Twitter daunting.
Twitter is battling to stay relevant in the era of the million social networks available to users. As of now, Twitter’s biggest battle is itself. The network tries to do everything, from videos to photos to gifs, and it scares away potential Twitterers. Vine only has six-second videos and Instagram only has graphics.
Twitter has tried to combine all of the social networks into one place, which complicates the experience. Moments is the answer to simplifying that experience, all while using the network’s full-encompassing features as a strength.