Twitter will offer viewership stats for Moments makers

Five months after enabling anyone to create a Moment, Twitter will now show these Moment makers how many times people have seen the topical collection of tweets they have curated.

On Tuesday, Twitter rolled out Moments Analytics so that anyone who has created a Moment can see stats on how that Moment has performed.

People will be able to see how many times a Moment was opened, how many individuals opened a Moment, how many likes a Moment received, how many times people clicked the Moment’s share button to tweet it out and what percentage of people viewed the entire Moment.

To view these measurements, people can tap on an icon in the top-right corner of the Moment in Twitter’s app or the “…” icon when viewing the Moment on Twitter’s site.

The move to expose Moment measurements appears to be Twitter’s latest attempt to draw interest in its storytelling format and put it on par with similar products from Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook, Facebook Messenger and Medium.

Twitter originally introduced Moments in October 2015 as its own spin on Snapchat’s Live Stories. In Twitter’s case, these Moments would be collections of tweets curated by Twitter’s in-house staff, certain publishers or brands around a specific topic or event, like a sports game, awards show or breaking news item. Almost a year after debuting Moments, the company opened up the format to everyone, so that anyone could create a Moment in the same way they might a Story on Snapchat or Instagram. But it’s unclear how many people are producing or viewing Moments, especially after Twitter hid the feature in its app earlier this year. Originally Moments appeared in their own tab that appeared on the bottom of Twitter’s app’s home screen. But in January 2017, Twitter replaced that “Moments” tab with one called “Explore,” tucking in Moments as a subsection of Explore and making Moments harder to find and easier to forget.

By exposing Moment measurements, Twitter may entice more people to produce a Moment. But that assumes that people like the viewership stats they see. Subpar stats may discourage people from making Moments.

About The Author

Tim Peterson

Tim Peterson, Third Door Media's Social Media Reporter, has been covering the digital marketing industry since 2011. He has reported for Advertising Age, Adweek and Direct Marketing News. A born-and-raised Angeleno who graduated from New York University, he currently lives in Los Angeles. He has broken stories on Snapchat's ad plans, Hulu founding CEO Jason Kilar's attempt to take on YouTube and the assemblage of Amazon's ad-tech stack; analyzed YouTube's programming strategy, Facebook's ad-tech ambitions and ad blocking's rise; and documented digital video's biggest annual event VidCon, BuzzFeed's branded video production process and Snapchat Discover's ad load six months after launch. He has also developed tools to monitor brands' early adoption of live-streaming apps, compare Yahoo's and Google's search designs and examine the NFL's YouTube and Facebook video strategies.