Twitter to shut down Fleets, its expiring tweets feature

Twitter, US-based microblogging and social networking service, says it will be removing its Fleets feature after eight months of rollout.

The social media platform broke the news in a blog post on Wednesday. It added that the feature hadn’t proved popular with users.

Twitter said Fleets, which allows full-screen messages that expire after 24 hours, will become defunct on August 3.

“We built Fleets as a lower-pressure, ephemeral way for people to share their fleeting thoughts. We hoped Fleets would help more people feel comfortable joining the conversation on Twitter,” the company wrote.

“But, in the time since we introduced Fleets, we haven’t seen an increase in the number of new people joining the conversation with Fleets like we hoped. Because of this, on August 3, Fleets will no longer be available on Twitter.

“Using our learnings from Fleets, we’ll focus on creating other ways for people to join the conversation and talk about what’s happening in their world.

“Although we built Fleets to address some of the anxieties that hold people back from Tweeting, Fleets are mostly used by people who are already Tweeting to amplify their own Tweets and talk directly with others.

“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 had launched Fleets last November after testing the feature in India, Brazil, Italy, and South Korea.

It, however, said it looks to test updates to its tweet composer and camera to incorporate features from the Fleets composer.

“We’re evolving what Twitter is, and trying bigger, bolder things to serve the public conversation,” Twitter added.

“A number of these updates, like Fleets, are speculative and won’t work out. We’ll be rigorous, evaluate what works, and know when to move on and focus elsewhere.

“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.”