Bye Bye Fleets, Stories Feature From Twitter Will Disappear August 3rd

Twitter built Fleets in November 2020. (photo: twitter)

JAKARTA - Twitter has finally closed its Fleets service, which is a row of full-screen clips at the top of the Twitter timeline that expires after 24 hours similar to the Instagram Stories feature. The reason behind this shutdown is low usage after being widely launched eight months ago.

"Fleets is designed to make people feel more comfortable sharing their short thoughts. However, since introducing Fleets, Twitter has not seen any new users adding this feature to following conversations on Twitter as expected", Twitter said in its official blog, Thursday, July 15.

In addition, Twitter will continue to provide new ways to participate in conversations, listen to feedback, and make necessary adjustments when there are better ways to serve Twitter users.

Starting August 3, users will only see the Spaces feature, which is a Twitter live audio chat room that is also at the top of the user's timeline.

"Using the lessons we learned from Fleets, we will focus on creating other ways for people to join the conversation and talk about what's happening in their world", Twitter said.

While Twitter built Fleets in November 2020 to address concerns that keep people from Tweeting, most Fleets are used by people who are already Tweeting to amplify their own tweets and talk directly to others.

"We'll be exploring more ways to work around what's keeping people from participating on Twitter. For people who are already Tweeting, we're focused on making this process better for you", Twitter said.

Fleets tried to use the Stories format, like the one owned by Snapchat and later popularized by Instagram. Fleets users typically use the medium, with users happy to share photos and videos to add to discussions on Twitter.

While this feature is disabled, Twitter will further test updates to composer and camera to incorporate features from Fleet, such as a full-screen camera, text formatting options, and GIF stickers.

"Fleets is speculative and will not work. We will research in detail, evaluate what works, and know when to proceed and focus elsewhere", said Twitter.