Twitter is testing a way to provide more context on its trends by putting the title of a corresponding Moment underneath it, TechRadar has discovered.
On Friday, we noticed the trend for Ben Simmons had a short description below it: "No. 1 draft pick Ben Simmons fractures his foot." Typically, the number of tweets about a trend or the handles of people talking about it are underneath the term, so this short description stood out.
When asked about the blurb, a Twitter spokesperson confirmed a description test is underway.
"We're beginning to experiment with using Moments content to provide more context on trends," the spokesperson said. "When a Moment is found to be relevant to a trend, we may use the title of the Moment in the trend's description. As always, what's trending will continue to be determined entirely by algorithm. More details about trends in our help center, and our Moments guidelines are here. "
Twitter's trends are determined entirely by algorithm, though there are aspects of personalization based on where you live and who you follow. Twitter's Moments, meanwhile, are curated by a team of humans.
When I clicked on the Ben Simmons trend, I was taken to the Moment created for the news he had broken his foot. The Moment title matched the trend description:
The trend description appeared both on twitter.com as well as in the Twitter iOS app. Both descriptions were for the same trend.
To be clear, in this test a trend description will only appear if there is a corresponding Moment, and the description will be the title of the Moment. If you click the trend, you'll be taken to the Moment.
The test is small right now and it's unclear if Twitter will ever make this a full-fledged feature. It's a smart move as it provides context to what can seem like random words or phrases if you don't know what a trend is referring to.
Twitter is seemingly continuing to try new ways to keep users engaged with the service. It recently stopped counting media attachments and quoted tweets against users' 140-character count, and other such improvements are likely on the way before long.
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