Twitter is deleting its fleets of tweets after they failed to catch on.
The company started testing twitters that disappeared after 24 hours in March last year in Brazil. Fleets were created to address concerns raised by new users who may be put off by normal tweets’ permanent nature and public nature.
Twitter released a statement Wednesday saying that they have not seen an increase in people joining Fleets’ conversation like they hoped. “So, Fleets will not be available on Twitter starting August 3.
Kayvon Beykpour is head of Twitter’s consumer product. She stressed that this is a part of the company’s culture.
He tweeted, “Big bets can be risky and speculative so by definition many of them won’t work.” If we don’t have to shut down features once in a while, it’s a sign we aren’t taking enough big swings.
The fleets feature is a reminiscence of Instagram’s “stories” and Snapchat snaps which allow users to post messages and photos for a short time. These features are becoming increasingly popular among social media users who want smaller groups and private chats. However, people use Twitter in a different way than Facebook, Instagram and messaging apps. It’s more open to public discussion and allows them to keep up with the latest happenings. It turned out that fleets didn’t make sense.
The name was another issue. The name fleets was chosen because they were fleeting. Many people also pointed out that the word is also a brand for an enema.
Twitter posted a tweet annoucing the decision. It said “we’re sorry” or “you’re welcome”, tacitly acknowledging mixed reactions from users to the feature.
