Twitter ‘Fleets’ Feature to Shut Down, Company Working on Something New

Twitter said on Wednesday it will shut down its ephemeral posts feature called Fleets on August 3 after the product failed to gain traction with users.

The shutdown comes just eight months after the social media platform rolled out Fleets to all its users globally, and just one month after it began testing advertising within the feature.

In a blog post on Wednesday, Twitter said it had not seen an increase in the number of new users posting Fleets as it had hoped.

“Using our learnings from Fleets, we’ll focus on creating other ways for people to join the conversation and talk about what’s happening in their world,” Twitter’s Head of Product, Brand & Video Ads, Ilya Brown wrote in the blog post. The company also tweeted that it is “working on some new stuff.”

Twitter noticed that Fleets are mostly used by users who are “already Tweeting to amplify their own Tweets and talk directly with others.” Brown said that the company will explore more ways to “address what holds people back from participating on Twitter.”

The company also noticed that the bulk of Fleets comprised media such as photos and videos. “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 said.

Spaces will continue to show up at the top of the timeline, Brown added. Back in June, Twitter began testing advertisement on Fleets. Brown said that the company is taking a close look at learnings to “assess how these ads perform on Twitter.”

“We’re evolving what Twitter is, and trying bigger, bolder things to serve the public conversation. A number of these updates, like Fleets, are speculative and won’t work out. We’ll be rigorous, evaluate what works, and know when to move on and focus elsewhere,” Brown said.