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Twitter Moments launches in attempt to simplify content, attract users

By Andrew V. Pestano
The homepage of Twitter Moments, showcasing the top topics being discussed on Twitter in a feature designed to simplify content. Twitter Moments, formerly code-named Project Lightning, launched on Tuesday in an attempt to attract users who found the social media platform difficult to manage. Image screenshot of Twitter Moments page
The homepage of Twitter Moments, showcasing the top topics being discussed on Twitter in a feature designed to simplify content. Twitter Moments, formerly code-named Project Lightning, launched on Tuesday in an attempt to attract users who found the social media platform difficult to manage. Image screenshot of Twitter Moments page

SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 6 (UPI) -- Twitter Moments, formerly code-named Project Lightning, launched on Tuesday in an attempt to simplify content and attract users who found the social media platform difficult to manage.

The Moments feature allows users to view the largest events being discussed on Twitter, an example on Tuesday being the announcement of the Nobel Prize in Physics and the search for the El Faro missing cargo ship.

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"When you jump into Twitter things are already mid-stream because you're not on Twitter most of the day," Madhu Muthukumar, a product manager at Twitter, told WIRED. "So when you get there, the odds that something started the second you got there is low."

Twitter users will be able to access Moments and see a particular popular story unfold. This will simplify the use of the social media website by consolidating important topics into one feature where the most-relevant information will be displayed chronologically.

Twitter's timeline of events can turn chaotic, as all tweets in the timeline from all accounts a user follows are updated immediately. A user can open Twitter and catch up, only to come back hours later to hundreds of more tweets. This sort of social-media chaos has caused millions of Twitter users to abandon the platform.

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"This is the content people come to Twitter for," Muthukumar added. "We can give you that, all the way through the end when we know that a story's going to break like that. And then right at the end we can tell you, here's the end line ... your moment has ended, and then from then on out, no more of those tweets."

Moments was rolled out a day after Twitter founder Jack Dorsey was named the San Francisco company's official chief executive officer after serving in the role temporarily since July.

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Dorsey was appointed to interim CEO following the resignation of Dick Costolo in July. Costolo quit amid several executive changes, misguided product strategy and growing pressure from investors who said Twitter was yielding disappointing user growth.

Since going public in November 2013, Twitter has reported a loss each quarter and its overall size still lags behind that of Facebook. The site has an average 316 million monthly users.

Tomas Monzon contributed to this report.

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