Twitter boosts breaking news content with Moments feature

Twitter has launched its Moments feature in Australia, adding a breaking news function to its service.

Twitter Moments

Twitter has launched its Moments feature in Australia, adding a breaking news function to its service.

A Twitter Australia spokesman said the new feature would be rolled out to Australian users from today.

Moments will appear as an extra selection option at the bottom of the iOS and Android app and at the top left of the Twitter website.

Moments consists of a series of topics covering news stories, sporting matches, or other topics people talk about on Twitter, the spokesman said.

The news items today on offer include WA Labor Senator Joe Bullock’s resignation, former PM John Howard talking about his legacy, how CNN mistook Austria for Australia and Australian pace bowler James Pattison’s recurrent shin stress problems.

Selecting an item brings up a series of chosen tweets on that topic. Twitter says the tweets are selected from people involved in breaking news, from the news breakers or from celebrities in the news.

Twitter Australia said the offering here would be a combination of locally-generated content and global news. Twitter Australia and its partners would curate and select the tweets; algorithms also would be used to select content.

In sport the AFL and NRL would themselves take part in generating Moments content; in local news BuzzFeed Australia and the ABC would help generate news content. Twitter was in discussions with other partners to take part in Moments.

“Our news partners are focus on creating the news; Twitter is focused on creating the best tweets,” a Twitter spokesman said. “It is day one and we are going to be adding more partners as we go.”

He said Moments could be used to find Twitter content outside the timeline.

In Australia, Twitter hoped Moments would be a big driver in the lead up to the federal election later this year.

The upcoming Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras would feature on Twitter Moments.

Australia is the 4th market to get Twitter Moments, which already has rolled out in the US, UK and Brazil.