• by Erik Sass , Staff Writer @eriksass1, October 6, 2015

An array of big publishers are taking their cue from Nescafe and celebrating the moments of our lives with Twitter’s new, curated news feature, “Moments,” which launched this week.

Previously called “Project Lightning,” “Moments” — not to be confused with the Facebook feature of the same name — is intended to make Twitter more accessible to casual users by compiling tweets about high profile, ongoing events, thus removing a lot of the confusing clutter that has hindered more widespread adoption.

There are also “evergreen” Moments devoted to topics like hobbies, science, and so on.

The feature highlights the most discussed stories and topics on Twitter through a new central tab on the app and Web site. After opening Moments, users see top trending stories across a range of categories and can tap on a particular item to see the top tweets about that subject.

Content can include text, but also photos and video. (There is no live video from Periscope, at least so far.)

The list of publishers contributing content to Twitter Moments at launch includes The New York Times, The Washington Post, Entertainment Weekly, Vogue, Fox News, Buzzfeed, Mashable, Bleacher Report, Getty Images, Major League Baseball and NASA, according to the microblogging site.

The Washington Post’s presence on Moments is an “immersive, visual experience… built to instantly load, and utilizes Tweets, photos, videos and Vines so that users can dive into the most compelling stories on Twitter as they happen,” the publisher stated. The newspaper will also embed Moments on its on Web site and app, augmenting its own coverage of different subjects.

Moments is especially well-suited for news publishers because its algorithms favor tweets posted by people who are actually on the scene for a major event -- including reporters.

With the launch of Moments, Twitter joins a number of online rivals trying to boost user engagement through partnerships with publishers. The list of online platforms distributing news directly includes Facebook, which launched “Instant Articles” in May; Snapchat’s “Discover,” launched in January; and Apple News, launched last month.