Twitter Opening Up ‘Moments’ Feature To Influencers, Brands — And Eventually Everyone

On the heels of Instagram’s launch of Stories — a feature enabling users to compose a slideshow of disappearing images and videos (not unlike an identical feature popularized by Snapchat), Twitter has announced that it too will enable a broader array of users to compose sequences of Tweets into what it calls Moments.

After launching in October and thus far being curated mostly by Twitter itself, the company announced in a blogpost today that it is opening up Moments to a broader group of creators “including influencers, partners, brands, and, in the coming months, everyone. By extending this creative format to more people, and eventually to everyone on Twitter,” writes product manager Gaby Peña, “we are giving people a new and dynamic way to tell their stories.”

Some of the early accounts piloting the expanded Moments feature include #BlackLivesMatter activist DeRay Mckesson, who commemorated the birth of the movement with the death of Michael Brown on Aug.9, 2014; Allure magazine, which shared a day in the life of editor-in-chief Michelle Lee; and Budweiser, which showcased a new beer can design.

“Moments allows us to collect and curate Tweets to tell stories in new ways,” Mckesson said in a statement. “It’s a powerful Twitter feature, continuing to help build community as we engage specific topics and events.”

The overarching Moments feed on Twitter will remain as is, according to The Next Web, and Moments created by individual accounts — which can focus on any topic — will be accessed with a dedicated button on their profiles. Moments are also accessible by clicking on links inside of tweets.