Twitter ditches Fleets feature from August 3, Netizens breathe sigh of relief

3 August 2021 will mark the day when Twitter bids farewell to a feature that has now become meme-worthy on the social media platform. Yes, we are talking about Twitter fleets, the row of fullscreen tweets at the top of the Twitter timeline that expire after 24 hours. The temporary tweet format will be shutting down due to low usage after the microblogging site launched it widely merely eight months ago.

Twitter launched Fleets globally in November last year to give people a new way to join the conversation and share momentary thoughts. Twitter’s judgment to remove Fleets is not just an admission that the feature didn’t work, rather the companies acknowledgment of what users really want. People would Fleet text, reactions to Tweets, photos, or videos and customize their Fleets with various backgrounds, stickers, and text options.

Details on Fleets and why it perished too soon?

According to Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, the company started Fleets not to build a storage product within Twitter, but to solve the problem of people not wanting to tweet because they appear to be staying around too long.

"We certainly have seen a different audience than we normally see, but we still have much to learn and a lot to figure out in terms of like, where it goes from here," Dorsey had said.

Twitter will instead be moving Spaces, its Clubhouse clone for live audio, to the top of the timeline and netizens have expressed both their gratitude and confusion regarding its existence in the tweets. Fleets was its shot at using Stories, the popular social media format invented by Snapchat and further popularized by Instagram, to lower the pressure around tweeting. “We hoped Fleets would help more people feel comfortable joining the conversation on Twitter,” Ilya Brown, Twitter’s vice president of product, said in a statement. “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.”

Netizens react to the departure of 'Fleets'

Netizens had mixed reactions to the decision made by Twitter and some even accepted that they didn't even know that the feature existed in the microblogging platform yet. But all in all, they were satisfied by the fact that the social media brand had understood what was relevant for the brand and acted accordingly.
 

Some of them were not even bothered by this decision as they hardly cared about the feature and believed it was no good for the microblogging platform. They were actually satisfied that the company made its decision as hardly people used it.

Some even joked about Fleet's quick departure.

While Twitter proved as an example for other social media platforms to keep experimenting with new ideas in their interface and also accept the failure of its reach, The company confirmed its next move in a blog where it said it would create other ways for people to join the conversation.

"We'll explore more ways to address what holds people back from participating on Twitter. And for the people who already are Tweeting, we're focused on making this better for you," Twitter said in a blog post.

Image Credits - Twitter