On Wednesday, Twitter announced that tweeps wouldn’t be seeing Fleets starting from 3 August 2021. The reason is that there hasn’t been an increase in the number of people sharing their “fleeting thoughts”.
Twitter Fleets are expiring
Twitter launched the feature in November 2020, adopting the Stories format that was first popularised by Snapchat and Instagram. According to The Verge, Twitter is not ditching the feature because it was an epic failure but because it is simply not serving its purpose, which was, according to Twitter, to lift the pressure of writing traditional tweets off people’s shoulders. Twitter introduced the feature because people have to tweet more, instead of consuming other people’s tweets, according to The Verge.
Twitter took to the streets to break the news to tweeps:
we’re removing Fleets on August 3, working on some new stuff
— Twitter (@Twitter) July 14, 2021
we’re sorry or you’re welcome
“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,” he added.
So what now?
After learning that the Fleets didn’t go as planned, Twitter said they will come up with other ways to achieve their goal — getting more people to Tweet. The bird app also said they will find their way around people’s anxiety to tweet, and that they will also find ways to make the tweeting experience even better for people who are already tweeting.
The top of the timeline will now only show spaces — when someone you follow created a space — or is speaking on a space.
Twitter also said that they are taking a closer look at Fleet ads, which was one of their first explorations and vertical format ads.
“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,” Brown siad.