1/ Quick thread on Twitter Moments (which is having a moment itself) and its near death experience. Hooray for all the Tweeps who respectfully fought so hard to protect the product in 2015/2016 when an understandable push for focus meant its existence was very much at risk.

2/ In any moment of intense focus, you have to build a “do not do” list that makes people pretty uncomfortable. At the time, the metaphor we used internally was that by not doing things, you are conceding that you will drop some balls. BUT...

3/ The best product stewards in those situations can distinguish between rubber balls and glass balls. You’re okay dropping rubber balls, because they bounce. You can come back to them later. You’re NOT ok dropping glass balls, because they break. You’ve lost the opportunity.

4/ Twitter Moments has evolved more visibly than almost anything else at Twitter these past few years. There’s been a ton of trial and error. Curation for a platform is hard, delicate work, and there are a lot of difficult decisions to make that require learning from experience.

5/ To some in late 2015/early 2016, it felt like there was no time for that learning. The product was superfluous. But some Tweeps understood that Twitter needed more surface area within the product; a canvas that could serve as a different entry point to all the info on Twitter.

6/ And that would take time to get right. Twitter Moments was a glass ball. The exec team debated this robustly. Initial Moments metrics were, ahem, light. But enough people believed in it that it was protected, and it has received enough oxygen to survive (historically hard).

7/ Still much more work to do. But it’s a reminder that in hardship like now, making the right call on rubber vs glass balls (essentially capital allocation) is the hallmark of strong leaders and product stewards alike, and the way to protect the future. Twitter Moments 4 evah.