Less than a year after its launch, Twitter has announced plans to shut down ‘Fleets’ – its version of Snap stories made popular by Instagram stories. The 24-hour disappearing stories (ephemeral) feature was introduced to attract new users to share their fleeting thoughts, however, it has mostly been used by people who already use the platform to get more views on their tweet.
Starting August 3, 2021, Fleets would no longer be available on Twitter and the company is working on other creative ways to attract new users and keep existing users in the conversation. Features such as GIF stickers, full-screen camera, and text formatting options from Fleets composer will now be integrated into Tweet composer and camera.
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“We’re evolving what Twitter is, and trying bigger, bolder things to serve the public conversation. A number of these updates, like Fleets, are speculative and won’t work out. We’ll be rigorous, evaluate what works, and know when to move on and focus elsewhere,” Ilya Brown, Twitter’s vice president of product, said in a statement. “If we’re not evolving our approach and winding down features every once in a while – we’re not taking big enough chances. We’ll continue to build new ways to participate in conversations, listening to feedback and changing direction when there may be a better way to serve people using Twitter.”
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The top of the timeline will not entirely go back to being bare as it would now highlight Twitter Spaces, mostly when a follower is hosting or speaking in a live audio conversation. Twitter recently started testing ‘full-screen, vertical format ads’ in Fleets with a handful of advertisers. It is however, unclear if these ads will surface at other parts of the platform soon.
Source: Twitter Blog
