While Twitter Inc.’s ad dollars are rising, the number of consumers using the platform has been relatively flat. And despite Twitter’s efforts to echo the ad targeting options offered by Facebook Inc. and other platforms, slow user growth has limited how much money many retail marketers are willing to spend on Twitter.
To fix the problem, Twitter today rolled out a feature called Moments to curate the avalanche of information flowing across Twitter about major events, including sporting events, awards shows, breaking news or cultural memes. It’s a long-awaited project aimed at helping people more easily see information coming across Twitter.
With the Moments tool, Twitter will use human editors and an algorithm to pull together posts about particular events—such as the Academy Awards or a political debate—so users can quickly catch up.
“We know finding these only-on-Twitter moments can be a challenge, especially if you haven’t followed certain accounts,” Madhu Muthukumar, product manager for Moments, said in a blog post. “Moments helps you find the best of Twitter as easily as tapping an icon—regardless of who you follow.”
Moments aims to tackle Twitter’s main challenge: Its core product hasn’t evolved, says Erna Alfred Liousas, a Forrester Research Inc. analyst who covers social media. “Moments gives us a new way to consume and interact with content,” she says. “This may be a way to re-engage inactive users and attract new users.”
Moments, initiated under former CEO Dick Costolo, will test new CEO Jack Dorsey’s ability to draw a wider audience. The social network’s user growth has stalled in recent quarters, and the company’s stock has dropped 22% this year as investors question Twitter’s long-term prospects. Hundreds of millions of Twitter accounts are dormant or rarely used, according to an analysis by Wells Fargo.
Twitter is putting together a marketing campaign to promote Moments, something it has rarely done for product announcements. The feature will be available first in the U.S. as a new tab within Twitter’s iPhone and Android applications, as well as on its main desktop website. It will contain sections on subjects including entertainment and sports.
The San Francisco-based company has been building a team of curators to sift through Twitter for notable posts. Partners on the project also will contribute, including Bleacher Report, Buzzfeed, Entertainment Weekly, Fox News, Getty Images, Mashable, NASA, The New York Times, Vogue and The Washington Post.
That approach to curation could prove to be a challenge for Twitter both because it isn’t clear how it will scale the effort and because the content those partners choose to highlight might not match what appears in Twitter’s trending section, says Ed Terpening, an analyst at Altimeter Group.
“It isn’t practical for Twitter to get rid of trending topics because it sells ads against it,” he says. “But if trending topics and Moments don’t connect it looks like there are two different organizations thinking about the same things and it creates a disconnect.”
Dorsey touted Moments, known internally as Project Lightning, on a conference call Monday announcing his permanent return to the CEO role, saying it’s among a number of changes the company will be making to simplify Twitter and attract users.
“Project Lightning is one such opportunity to really make sure that we can show off exactly what’s going on in the world in a very contextual way,” Dorsey said.
The product also lets Twitter sell ads beyond the typical promoted tweets that show up within a user’s timeline. The viewers for the new ads don’t have to be regular Twitter users, opening up possibilities for revenue, such as streaming shows at the same time they appear on television and sharing the advertising revenue with broadcasters—an option that may work for awards shows or sports, people familiar with the project have said. The company also could have larger-format photo or video advertising, or have a company sponsor an event’s stream.
However, it is too early to say whether Moments will drive more advertisers to its platform, Alfred Liousas says.
“Twitter has to show some results and keep positive buzz going about its new products,” she says. “Hopefully this isn’t the only one.”
Bloomberg Business contributed to this report
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