Twitter is removing Fleets from the platform on 3rd August, less than a year after they were first introduced.
The site announced the news via a tweet (how novel) which reads: “We’re removing Fleets on August 3, working on some new stuff. We’re sorry, or you’re welcome.”
Fleets are (or rather were) Twitter’s answer to social media stories. If you’ve used Twitter on mobile this year, you’ll have noticed the row of account avatars at the top of your timeline. Users could post images or text on their stories that would disappear after a day. A ‘fleeting’ amount of time, if you will.
In a statement from Twitter’s vice president of Product, Ilya Brown said: “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.”
It seems that Twitter intended Fleets to be a way of bringing new users to the platform. With the feature emulating the likes of Instagram, Facebook, and Snapchat stories, it makes sense that mainstream audiences might catch on to the familiar user interface.
Alas, the Fleets are set to be shut down on 3rd August later this year. Twitter ‘Spaces’ will remain at the top of users’ timelines, however. Those are the audio chat rooms that Twitter also added earlier this year.
Were you a big fan of Twitter Fleets? Let us know across our social channels.
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Featured Image Credit: Twitter