Twitter is ramping up Moments, a user-curated story-telling platform coming soon that will take on Snapchat and Instagram Stories
Last week, Instagram made a virtue out of ripping off the ephemeral nature of Snapchat with Instagram Stories. And now, Twitter is ramping up Moments, a user-curated story-telling platform of its own.
Moments effectively allows users to collect and share tweets around specific events.
Originally debuted last October, Twitter is now opening Moments up to influencers, partners and brands before eventually making it available to the masses “in the coming months”.
Moments, originally known as Project Lightning, has so far been used by brands like BuzzFeed, Entertainment Weekly, Getty Images, NASA, The New York Times, Major League Baseball and Vogue. It is also being used by personalities like human rights activist DeRay McKesson and business guru Gary Vaynerchuk’s VaynerMedia.
Moments will be accessible through a dedicated button on users’ profiles and also by clicking on links in a tweet.
The battle of the storytellers
By making Moments personal and open to every user, it seems Twitter is trying to muscle in on the Stories features on Snapchat, as well as Instagram Stories.
Last week, Instagram launched its own Instagram Stories service, where photos and stories disappear after 24 hours.
Ironically, as Facebook-owned Instagram reveals ephemeral features, Snapchat recently began introducing features that allow users to save old photos in a private archive.
Instagram has more than 500m users, of whom 300m use the app daily. Snapchat, meanwhile, is estimated to have 150m users every day – more than Twitter, which has less than 140m daily users.
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