Twitter Moments, Twitter’s own take on short-form content told as a series of connected tweets, are today getting their own analytics, the company announced today. This will allow Moments’ creators to track how well their content is working on Twitter, by offering details on opens, likes, shares and more. The idea is that this data will aid in crafting better-performing Moments in the future.
As a refresher, the Twitter Moments feature was first launched in 2015, as something of an answer to Snapchat Stories. Like Stories, Moments are designed to be simple and quick pieces of content. But instead of images, they string together a collection of tweets to tell a story.
The feature was first only available to brands and influencers, which could have slowed their adoption among Twitter’s user base. Creation tools didn’t become available to regular users until November, 2016.
Moments’ existence also didn’t spur more sign-ups for the service, as the company had perhaps hoped. Nor did they replace the “tweetstorm” as a means of sharing longer thoughts — manually numbered and connected tweets are still hugely popular on today’s Twitter.
Twitter ultimately decided to demote Moments in its app. Earlier this year, the company introduced an “Explore” section on mobile that took over the spot Moments once held. While Moments are still a part of this section, they’re no longer the only draw, or even the main one. Trending searches, video and live streams are now heavily featured here.
But several brands are continuing to post their own Moments. For example, at the time of writing, you can find Moments from Reuters, Hype Machine, GQ, SB Nation, Major League Soccer, Net-A-Porter and others featured in the Explore screen, along with those crafted in-house.
Twitter declined to share metrics around Moments’ adoption, traction or growth.
To access the new analytics, you can click on the down arrow or the three-dot “More” menu.
The tool will primarily be used by publisher partners and brand advertisers, we understand, and will track opens (number of times a Moment is viewed); unique opens (views by unique users); like, shares (from the tweet button), and the completion rate (percentage who reached the end of the Moment).