Twitter has announced the launch of Moments analytics, a new tool which will show you a range of stats for each Moment you create, including 'Opens', 'Unique opens', 'Likes', 'Shares' and 'Completion rate'.
Introducing Moments analytics for all Twitter users on web. Just click on the down arrow to see how your favorite Moments are performing! pic.twitter.com/9YlyeEjJ6o
- Twitter Moments (@TwitterMoments) March 7, 2017
So, cool right? Now you can see how your Moments are performing and determine if they're resonating with your audience. That should get more people using Moments. Right?
Symptomatic of Twitter more generally, it's still hard to know exactly what to make of the option.
When launched back in 2015, Moments was touted as "a bold change", a whole new way to experience tweets, one that addressed one of the platform's key challenges - that being that Twitter is difficult to understand for non-users. Moments would fix this - Twitter's full of great insights, Moments would make it easier than ever to access them, while also delivering tweet content in a full-screen, immersive format, similar to that which had gained traction amongst younger users over on Snapchat.
It all makes sense, everything about the product seemed to add up to a win. But there were problems from the get-go and Moments has never really recovered.
One of the key issues with Moments was that, at launch, the only people who could create them were Twitter's own curation team and a group of select partners. This meant that the value of the storytelling process, popularized by Snapchat Stories (and now Instagram and Facebook in varying ways), was immediately lessened - you couldn't tell your own stories through Moments, you could only see what someone else told you was relevant.
This, in retrospect, seems like a major mis-step - social media, after all, is all about being social and sharing your perspective. Refusing to give users the opportunity to use such a tool for this purpose goes against the logic of why social storytelling is popular.
The result, in this case, meant that few people returned to Moments for more, if they even tried it out in the first place. Despite the Moments tab being given pride of place in the app, it didn't resonate with users.
Twitter did finally open Moments to all users - a year later, in September 2016 - but then, around two weeks after that, reports surfaced that Twitter was looking to demote the Moments tab in the app, reports which were eventually proven correct when Twitter announced in January that Moments would be replaced by a new 'Explore' tab, which would amalgamate Moments within it.
That seemed to be a clear admission that Moments hadn't lived up to expectation - but still, Twitter is pushing forward, introducing new features like these new analytics tools.
So what is it? Is Moments a key twitter feature or an add-on? Is it worth actually investing time in learning and working with Moments if there's a chance Twitter might just de-commission them at some stage due to lack of interest?
As with all things social, individual results will vary, so it's impossible to give a blanket response on whether Moments will be of benefit. But there are ways to use Moments to advantage - and Moments, which can also be embedded and shared off Twitter's platform, do look good, there is definitely potential there.
With the new analytics option, it's worth doing some investigating and testing out Moments if you get a chance. Maybe they'll resonate, maybe they won't, but these new tools will give you clear insight either way and enable you to make an informed choice on if and how you use it.
There are some great tips on using Moments for your business in this post.