By: Jackson Hayes
After only eight months, Twitter has announced the elimination of the feature, “Fleets.” In an attempt to compete with their competitors Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat, Twitter introduced story-like bubbles on top of the timeline that would disappear after 24 hours with the goal of “a lower-pressure, ephemeral way for people to share their fleeting thoughts," according to Twitter VP of Product, Ilya Brown.
Unfortunately for Twitter, instead of encouraging new users to contribute to the app, Fleets were being used by already active users who were trying to amplify their own Tweets and communicate directly with others. “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,” Brown added.
While Fleets did not meet the goals that Twitter intended, executives did not deem it a failure, but instead, an experiment. Recently, Twitter incorporated full-screen advertisements between Fleets. It will be interesting to see if they try to continue to incorporate them into their platform in the future
So, what’s next for Twitter?
While there have not been any announcements about any new additions to the app, Brown mentioned that they will be continuing to take chances with features to improve contribution. “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.”
Be on the lookout for what is next in Twitter’s future!