Social app Twitter is going to be getting a number of sweeping changes to its Moments feature in the next few months, as well as Search results, the Explore view and users’ news feeds. Specifically, there’s going to be a bigger focus on getting the most relevant and up-to-date content on given topics out to users in a faster, more intuitive manner. None of these changes are happening immediately, aside from dedicated Twitter pages full of World Cup content and pages for individual games, a feature that’s already hitting some sporting events, and will start spreading out to news topics within the next few months.
In Search, users will soon start seeing related news and top Tweets at the tops of their results pages. These headings can be clicked or tapped into to go to a specific Tweet, or to dive into the topic and get more adjacent information. Those who make frequent use of Explore will likely be glad to hear that it will soon be arranged with tabs by topic instead of by media type, which means that you can check out multiple topics at a glance and have all the types of multimedia and posts surrounding them gathered up in a single place. In the timeline view, the “Happening now” heading is going to start covering a wider range of topics and content, including local news and things catered specifically to each user. This personalization and expansion will also make its way into users’ notifications, an area previously dominated by worldwide breaking news. Finally, the Moments view will be changed for vertical navigation, and will begin to carry a wider range of content, both breaking and curated on a per-user basis, with a user interface not entirely dissimilar to the new Explore view.
Twitter has tried a great deal of different methods in the past to attract new users and retain old ones, and this initiative is largely more of the same. This time, it’s aimed at making Twitter an easier and faster place to get the latest news, but with a personalized twist that puts it above and beyond most typical news feeds. Making things more user-friendly, of course, is also squarely in focus here, and will likely pay off in retention.
