This past Tuesday, Twitter launched a new feature called “Moments” that may change the way users gather their news. Rather than searching through multiple news outlets, this feature has made finding content much easier since news is compiled in one easily accessible location, much like the RSS feed within the SOCi platform.

What is Moments and Why Do We Care?

When users log onto Twitter, it’s highly unlikely that they’re online the instant a certain TV show is airing or when a debate is occurring online over a political mishap. Moments displays snippets of videos, news articles, and pictures over different events that are being discussed on Twitter.

Users can follow these “moments” to have tweets directly related to an event curated to their timeline. However long the duration of the event is, tweets will only be on your timeline for that day, hour, etc., and then they go away so there isn’t a bunch of irrelevant tweets continuously on your timeline.

John Lennon’s 75th Birthday

An example of a “moment” I followed happened a few days ago for John Lennon’s 75th birthday. The moment highlighted a video of the world’s largest peace sign attempt conducted by Yoko Ono in New York, and showcased different tweets by famous political officials and organizations showing respect to John Lennon.

I had different tweets from friends of mine about John Lennon’s birthday on my news feed as well as famous people throughout the nation tweeting about it, so it was nice to see how different people were honoring his birthday. Also, throughout the day a little blue dot would show up near my Moments tab to indicate if there were any new noteworthy tweets and articles to read related to the moment I was following.

Moments Here to Stay

Moments provides the latest news within various categories such as news, fun, sports and entertainment. This recent development is currently only available in the United States, but will hopefully become global in the near future. I believe that this is a great way for everyone to stay connected and in the know with the latest news without having to seek out information, but simply having all the highlights easily accessible.

Twitter has partnerships with Mashable, CNN, Bleacher Report, Buzzfeed, Entertainment Weekly, Fox News, Getty Images, MLB, NASA, New York Times, Vogue and the Washington Post. I know that I personally look at different news sources each day, such as Mashable, CNN, Buzzfeed and Entertainment Weekly, so to have all the top stories presented in my Moments section each day just made keeping up with the latest news that much easier. What moments have you followed lately?