Twitter will be saying goodbye to its ephemeral posts feature Fleets on August 3, the company announced Thursday, July 15.

Fleets, like posts on Snapchat or Instagram Stories, allowed people to share images, videos or text that disappear after 24 hours. It was meant to lessen the pressure on people who feel like they have to say something definitive or perfect on their feed.

However, Fleets’ usage on Twitter apparently wasn’t enough for it to avoid the ax. “We hoped Fleets would help more people feel comfortable joining the conversation on Twitter. 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,” Twitter said in a blog.

Fleets launched in November 2020.

Twitter said it found that Fleets was being used mostly by individuals who already regularly tweet, and just used the feature to amplify their tweets and talk directly with others.

The media tools on Fleets may make their way onto the standard tweet composer, such as the full-screen camera, text formatting options, and GIF stickers.

Spaces, Twitter’s group audio rooms, will continue to occupy the space on the top of the feed, where Fleets were also found.

Fleet ads also allowed Twitter to experiment with full-screen vertical ads, which is an ad format the company may continue to assess and try out. – Rappler.com