If you haven’t tried using Twitter’s fairly new feature “Fleets” unfortunately time has run out and this feature is no longer available as of August 3rd. Twitter decided to remove its Fleets feature from the top of the homepage timeline on the app. Are you wondering what Fleets are? Fleets are the equivalent of Instagram’s or LinkedIn’s stories. Personally, I thought it was a pretty decent feature for Twitter to have but I am in the minority.
According to Twitter the reason this feature, which only began last year in 2020, has been canceled is due to the low usage and overall activity of Twitter Fleets. Currently, there are no exact numbers to offer in reference to how many people actually either created Fleets or watched Fleets but it’s enough for Twitter to kill off this feature after only a year of releasing it to the community.
Some people will miss Fleets on Twitter because they dislike Instagram and would prefer to post a disappearing Fleet than go to Instagram to create a story. I have to be honest I haven’t had enough time to really utilize the feature to the fullest extent and make an educated guess on whether it was truly valuable or not. When I started using Fleets it was extremely glitchy and quite challenging to do something that was similar to Instagram stories or even Snapchat. Eventually, I lost interest in trying to make it work and went back to using Instagram stories. I’m sure there are many people who can relate, meanwhile some don’t care whether it stays or goes, they will continue using Twitter and tweeting out 280 characters.
What will be next for Twitter? What new feature will take the place of Twitter Fleets? As of right now, the circular Fleet has been replaced with their new feature called Twitter Spaces. Twitter Spaces is an audio-only feature that resembles the Clubhouse app that’s currently popular. Audio seems to be the New Black on the various social media platforms and Twitter sees this as an opportunity to expand into the audio arena as well as make a few other updates that we the users might find valuable.
I give Twitter credit for trying out new features such as their now-deleted Fleets. The one thing I wish Twitter would do is promote any new features they create better. The question that presents itself is, how many people actually know about features like Fleet and now Spaces? How many people in the community actually care that they can do more than just a tweet? If they can answer this then I believe Twitter will make better decisions when it comes to marketing their own platform.
Let me know what you think and drop your thoughts in the comments.