As a non-Twitter Tweeter, I must say that the new feature is quite refreshing. The usual chaos of Twitter has always been a turn off for me. According to, Twitter’s Moments Will To Tame the Chaos, by Farhad Manjoo,
“The feature, called Moments, tries to transform Twitter’s chaotic timeline into a series of narratives that are easily navigated by people who aren’t familiar with the service’s strange rituals.”
Now with this new addition it is easy to filter through the piles of trending content; at a first glance shines lights on the changes in the filtering process of hashtags and the actual nature of a hashtag, the archiviblity of twitter, the curating of these said moments, and the actual meaning of a moment. However, it does raise the question of how all this content is being complied:
- How are these moments being filtered?
- Are “moments of the moment” based on the number of tweets?
- In what ways does this addition differ from other Social media feeds that offer the same categorical trending feature?
- Is this a loss or a gain for Twitter in the sense that they lose their identity of being the social media that allows users to bounce from one topic to another, or is it a gain because it opens to being a more organized and better structured medium?
- How are these moments curated and by whom?
- Are moments viewed in different ways via different mediums (smart phones vs. computer screens)?
- How long do these moments last?
- What are the ethical responsibilities of Twitter in this new feature to Tweets and their content?
- How has the Terms and Services changed based on this addition? Has it changed?
How do you feel about this new moment in Twitter’s history? Where do you think it goes from here? How long do think it will last? Will Twitter’s Moments only last a moment?
Mariah, I’m amazing at how well you were able to capture the complexities of this shift in practice (especially as you were able to get this point up *during* our class discussion of it!). Thank you so much for starting this conversation here. What do others think, now that you’ve had a chance to play around with this new feature some more?
One thing that I’ve been thinking about, with the curation of these “moments,” is the move, as we discussed, from more of a folksonomy (hashtags, user-generated content/organization) to taxonomy (moments, hierarchically chosen/structured content).
Here’s a recent interested article, “Why Twitter’s Dying (And What You Can Learn From It) from “Medium,” that suggests that Twitter is dying because it is suffering from abuse, tribes, and stagnation. The author claims, “When a technology is used to shrink people’s possibilities, more than to expand them, it cannot create value for them. And so people will simply tune it out, ignore it, walk away from it if they can. For the simple fact is that technologies which devalue us do not create value for us.” Take a look for yourself and share your thoughts (it’s a provocative argument): https://medium.com/bad-words/why-twitter-s-dying-and-what-you-can-learn-from-it-9ed233e37974