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Twitter to kill Fleets story feature less than a year after launch

Much like the very concept the feature toted, it would seem that after such a short time, the Twitter Fleets feature is disappearing into the void.
TJ Denzer
TJ Denzer
3

It was back in November 2020 that Twitter released a new(ish) feature for its platform which featured short-term expiring tweets: Fleets. Fleets was a not-so-subtle variation of Snapchat’s system and was a way to share quick stories that would then disappear soon after they were posted. Unfortunately, it seems Fleets is about to do the same thing. Twitter has officially announced that the Fleets story feature is going to be removed by early August.

Twitter made the announcement about shutting down Fleets via its official account on the social media platform. Starting on August 3, the Fleets story feature will be removed from Twitter across all platforms as the company turns its attention towards “working on some new stuff.” Inspired by (or more accurately copied from) Snapchat’s Stories feature, Fleets was an attempt by Twitter to try to get users to post more and regularly as opposed to simply consuming the tweets of others. It was only introduced back in November 2020 as a bit of a headscratcher given the Trump-charged political toxicity and misinformation that was running rampant at the time.

According to Twitter executives, Fleets simply didn’t have the effect that the company wanted it to have in terms of growing user interaction and activity.

“We hoped Fleets would help more people feel comfortable joining the conversation on Twitter,” Twitter Vice President of Product Ilya Brown said in a statement to The Verge. “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.”

And so it seems, just as its name implies, Fleets is going to the feature graveyard this coming month. Having recently rolled out a Twitter Blue premium service in select regions, it will be interesting to see what Twitter’s “new stuff” amounts to in place of Fleets in the immediate future.

Senior News Editor
Senior News Editor

TJ Denzer is a player and writer with a passion for games that has dominated a lifetime. He found his way to the Shacknews roster in late 2019 and has worked his way to Senior News Editor since. Between news coverage, he also aides notably in livestream projects like the indie game-focused Indie-licious, the Shacknews Stimulus Games, and the Shacknews Dump. You can reach him at tj.denzer@shacknews.com and also find him on Twitter @JohnnyChugs.

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