It was never good to have you Fleets, and this could be the smartest and bravest move from Twitter to accept and kill a feature that didn’t work out and most probably wasn’t even going to in future. So good riddance Twitter. All hail Dorsey.
So if you don’t know what fleets were, you’re in a good place, but I have to share the information. So fleets were full-screen tweets, very much like Instagram Stories that used to expire after 24 hours. But, now they’ll be gone for once and all on August 3.
“We’re removing Fleets on August 3, working on some new stuff. We’re sorry or you’re welcome,” said the microblogging platform through its official Twitter account.
So are we getting the good old Twitter back? No, instead of Fleets, the top bar will now accommodate Spaces, Twitter’s attempt at becoming a chatterbox. Well, Fleets will still live on but not the way you think. Features such full-screen camera, text formatting options, and GIF stickers from Fleets will be fused into the tweet composer.
Also Read: Mi 11 Lite Review: A Breeze of Fresh Air
“We hoped Fleets would help more people feel comfortable joining the conversation on Twitter,” Ilya Brown, Twitter’s VP 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.”
Fleet’s departure doesn’t come as a surprise. It never was anyone’s first choice to share their words, and twitter somehow overlooked the feelings of its own users. According to a survey by YouGov, only 7.7% of users said that they’d viewed a Fleet, while 53% have never even heard of the feature. This also tells us that every Story clone isn’t going to survive, and it’s good to know that.