Micro-blogging website; Twitter Inc. on Wednesday announced it will discontinue its 24-hour disappearing stories dubbed ‘Fleets’ on August 3rd, 2021. The social media giants made the announcement was made on Twitter, with a tweet that read, “We’re removing Fleets on August 3, working on some new stuff. We’re sorry or you’re welcome.”
we’re removing Fleets on August 3, working on some new stuff
we’re sorry or you’re welcome
— Twitter (@Twitter) July 14, 2021
The ephemeral tweet format that isn’t even a year is shutting down due to low usage.
“We built Fleets as a lower-pressure, ephemeral way for people to share their fleeting thoughts. We hoped Fleets would help more people feel comfortable joining the conversation on Twitter. But, in the time since we introduced fleets to everyone, we haven’t seen an increase in the number of new people joining the conversation with Fleets like we hoped,” Ilya Brown, Twitter’s Vice President of Product, said in a statement. “Because of this, on August 3rd, Fleets will no longer be available on Twitter.”
The company says it is ‘working on some new stuff’. The Verge reports that Twitter users will see active ‘Spaces’ at the top of their timelines. Spaces are Twitter’s live audio chat rooms — similar concept as Clubhouse.
In addition to new updates we ought to see, Twitter is said to add yet another function. The tweet composer will get more camera editing features that were on fleets, like text-formatting and GIF stickers on pictures.
Twitter’s decision to kill its 24-hour disappearing-like stories, Fleets as The Verge reports is not just an admission that the feature didn’t work, but that the company still hasn’t figured out how to get people tweeting more. Twitter has struggled to get new users to post regularly and not just consume other people’s tweets — thus thought the Fleets would work. Thus, it turns out, Fleets did not make any sense.
Disappearing ‘stories’ were invented by Snapchat and further popularized by Instagram and Facebook “stories”. Such features are increasingly becoming popular with social media platforms — where the likes of LinkedIn have also introduced disappearing stories to their platform.
