Twitter has announced its decision to shut down its ‘story feature’ that appears at the top of the Twitter timeline and expires after 24 hours, called ‘Fleets’.
According to reports, Twitter is shutting down Fleets due to low usage just eight months after it was launched. The feature will be disabled effective from August 3, 2021, Twitter said.
Twitter’s decision to axe Fleets is not just an admission that the feature didn’t work, but that the company still hasn’t figured out how to get people tweeting more. Twitter has struggled to get new users to post regularly and not just consume other people’s tweets. Fleets was its shot at using Stories, the popular social media format invented by Snapchat and further popularized by Instagram, to lower the pressure around tweeting.
“We hoped Fleets would help more people feel comfortable joining the conversation on Twitter,” Ilya Brown, Twitter’s vice president 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.”
“If we’re not evolving our approach and winding down features every once in a while – we’re not taking big enough chances,” Brown said. “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.”
we’re removing Fleets on August 3, working on some new stuff
we’re sorry or you’re welcome
— Twitter (@Twitter) July 14, 2021