Twitter Introduces Fleets – The 24-Hour Disappearing Posts
- After its first launch in Brazil in March, followed by Italy in April, Twitter has rolled out its version of Stories’Fleets’ for users to post ephemeral content in India.
- Fleets are self-deleting tweets which will disappear after 24 hours without likes, retweets or replies. People can only react with DMs to the Fleets.
Nearly, 7 years ago Snapchat introduced a feature ‘Stories’ to their platform that enabled users to share content with friends and followers that would disappear after 24 hours. Soon, a similar feature was added to Instagram and WhatsApp as Stories and Status respectively by Facebook.
Now, its Twitter’s turn.
How does it matter
India is the 8th largest market for Twitter based on usage and has around 13 million users. Twitter users in India can now have access to the feature ‘Fleets’ and in the coming days, it will be available on iOS and Apple.
Namaste! Starting today, Fleets are coming to India. If you’re in India, check it out and let us know what you think! #FleetsFeedback 🇮🇳 pic.twitter.com/U6QiHynm1U
— Kayvon Beykpour (@kayvz) June 9, 2020
Testing, testing…
We’re testing a way for you to think out loud without the Likes, Retweets, or replies, called Fleets! Best part? They disappear after 24 hours. pic.twitter.com/r14VWUoF6p— Twitter India (@TwitterIndia) June 9, 2020
Twitter is taking a staged approach similar to LinkedIn who rolled out its Stories feature in the UAE market, after the launch in Brazil and Netherlands.
Why, so important
The company said in a statement,
“We learned from research that people don’t Tweet because Tweets are public, feel permanent, and display the number of Retweets and Likes. We hope Fleets will empower many more people to express themselves more freely.”
By far the feedback received is optimistic and following are Twitter findings from the launch of Fleets in the two markets:
- Fleets make it easier for people to share thoughts.
- People are finding Twitter Fleets simpler to start convos and the number of tweets/DM is also increasing.
- People are expressing their thoughts freely after using Twitter Fleet.
- Though it is early to say, only a small percentage of abuse is reported each day after using Twitter Fleets. This was a key point that Twitter was looking to focus to make the platform toxic-free that had become a part and parcel over time.
How does it work:
“Fleets are fast and familiar. People can tap on their own avatar to start, add text or media, and hit send. That’s it, that’s how one Fleets.”
Twitter Fleets are ephemeral.
Image Credit: Twitter
Fleets, as seen in the images are similar to Stories that appear at the top of users’ Twitter home feed. Users can choose to make a post in a text (still 280 characters) or photos, GIF’s or videos. Users can tap on someone’s avatar to see what the person has posted which will eventually disappear after 24 hours.
Although Fleets doesn’t have additional visual presentation tools and AR functionality at this stage like most other Stories options but Twitter will gradually develop on this front as it had acquired Chrome Labs, a company focused on Advanced Stories presentation.
Lastly, Twitter Fleets is still in experiment mode and with access to more than 30 million users for a test pool, it could be the starting point for the global rollout.
So be ready with your Twitter Fleets strategy!
