Twitter Fleets to Be Sunk at Sea Aug. 3

Twitter Fleets: Born Nov. 17, 2020; died Aug. 3, 2021. The social network said Wednesday that its Snapchat-like disappearing tweets will disappear altogether Aug. 3, citing a lack of interest by users. Twitter product lead Kayvon Beykpour explained in a tweet Wednesday, “We’re winding down Fleets. We weren’t seeing the impact we’d like to see from a big bet, so we’re going to pivot our focus elsewhere. We’re still very focused on building tools that inspire new forms of conversation on Twitter, so you’ll see us taking these learnings into new bets. And just to make a point of our internal philosophy clear: Big bets are risky and speculative, so, by definition, a number of them won’t work. If we’re not having to wind down features every once in a while, then it would be a sign that we’re not taking big enough swings.” Vice president of product Ilya Brown expressed similar sentiments in a blog post Wednesday, writing, “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. If we're not evolving our approach and winding down features every once in a while, we're not taking big enough chances. 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.” He added that Twitter found that Fleets were mostly being used by people who were already tweeting, for the purposes of amplifying their existing tweets and sparking conversations, rather than the feature’s intended purpose as ‘a lower-pressure, ephemeral way for people to share their fleeting thoughts.” Brown also noted that most Fleets included photos and videos, so the social network plans to begin testing updates to its tweet composer incorporating features from the Fleets composer, such as its full-screen camera, GIFs and text formatting options. Fleets got off to a rocky start when Twitter began testing it last March, as the fact that the feature shared a name with an enema and suppositories brand did not go unnoticed. The feature rolled out globally last Nov. 17 and, not even one week later, the social network encountered an issue with its backend system to delete Fleets media, meaning that they were not, in fact, disappearing after 24 hours. After a quiet period, the updates started coming with the addition of stickers in early April and iOS backgrounds later that month. A more significant update came at the beginning of June, when the social network began testing full-screen vertical ads on Fleets, with global product marketing manager Austin Evers and senior product manager Justin Hoang writing in a blog post at the time, “Fleet ads are all about connecting your message with the everyday. Fleet ads are a space for brands to be creative: Go behind the scenes, have a creator take over your account, or share a hot take.” Perhaps knowing the end of the road was nearing, they also wrote, “As we experiment on this new surface for ads, we’ll take a close look at how vertical, full-screen ads perform on Twitter. We want to understand how this content performs for customers not just for Fleet ads, but for future iterations of full-screen formats on Twitter.” Indeed, Brown wrote Wednesday, “Our Fleet ads test, which concluded as planned last month, was one of our first explorations of full-screen, vertical format ads. We’re taking a close look at learnings to assess how these ads perform on Twitter.”

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Twitter Fleets to Be Sunk at Sea Aug. 3

The social network cited a lack of interest in the feature for the failure of its ‘big bet’

David Cohen

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David Cohen