To everyone’s surprise (or relief), Twitter is shutting down its Story feature Fleets. The feature, which was rolled out to all Twitter users in November 2020, was reportedly underused by the platform. The plug will be pulled on August 3. Twitter now appears to be going all-in on audio feature Spaces, which is taking over Fleets’ place.
Fleets did not activate enough new Twitter users
Twitter writes in the blog ' Goodbye, Fleets ' that it built the buy bulk sms service feature based on the idea that new tweeters would feel more comfortable becoming active on the platform. But in practice, it turned out that Fleets were mainly used by already active Twitterers. Parts of Fleets will probably be adopted in the Tweet composer, such as the full-screen camera and GIF stickers. Twitter also experimented with full-screen, vertical ads on Fleets. They are still investigating what lessons they can learn from that.
Twitter gave life to Fleets on the wave of the Stories hype. Snapchat popularized the idea of content that disappears after 24 hours, and soon the major social media platforms jumped on it. Instagram successfully copied the feature , and nowadays Stories seem to be everywhere. There's Facebook Stories, LinkedIn Stories , YouTube Stories , and even WhatsApp Stories. But now it turns out that such a feature isn't going to be a success on just any platform.