We’re used to brands trying to be funny or relatable online but for the announcement that Fleets would be removed Twitter has chosen the passive aggressive route.
As a reminder, because most people didn’t use them, Fleets were a kind of self-deleting tweet that only lasted 24 hours before it disappeared. It was Twitter’s attempt to offer a service similar to Snapchat. Just about every social media platform has implemented some similar feature with Instagram arguably the most successful with its Stories.
Twitter implemented Fleets back in November 2020, and they will be gone come August 2021.
we’re removing Fleets on August 3, working on some new stuff
we’re sorry or you’re welcome
— Twitter (@Twitter) July 14, 2021
In the replies to the announcement above some extra information is provided as to why the decision was made.
“We hoped Fleets would encourage more people to join the conversation, but that wasn’t the case. So we’re removing them and focusing on improving other parts of Twitter,” a reply reads.
Ilya Brown, Head of Product, Brand & Video Ads at Twitter, also wrote up an official blogpost about the situation available here.
Brown adds that Twitter didn’t see an increase in the amount of people making use of Fleets once it was rolled out to everyone.
While this all seems to be an overall failure Brown points out that Twitter has learned some things from the endeavour which it will make use of in the future.
“Most Fleets include media – people enjoy quickly sharing photos and videos to add to the discussion on Twitter. Soon, we’ll test updates to the Tweet composer and camera to incorporate features from the Fleets composer – like the full-screen camera, text formatting options, and GIF stickers,” Brown writes.
Other takeaways from Fleets include the fact that certain users are still anxious about tweeting even when there’s a timer for deletion and full screen vertical adverts are still being researched.
With the social media platform changing daily we’ll likely see some new features pop up soon and, with most people actively disliking Fleets or choosing not to use them when they were available, we don’t think this announcement will be too impactful for the average Twitter user.
