Back in March, Twitter product lead Kayvon Beykpour announced that the company is testing a new feature called Fleets. It’s basically the disappearing Stories posts on Snapchat, Instagram and Facebook. While the feature was only available in Brazil before, it has now rolled out the feature to everyone.
The announcement came via the company’s own Twitter account, complete with a video demonstrating the way it works. The description of it is pretty much the same as what Beykpour explained before. Which is to say that they’re for “fleeting thoughts” that you wouldn’t otherwise post.
That thing you didn’t Tweet but wanted to but didn’t but got so close but then were like nah.
We have a place for that now—Fleets!
Rolling out to everyone starting today. pic.twitter.com/auQAHXZMfH
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— Twitter (@Twitter) November 17, 2020
As the video suggests, you’ll be able to see who has seen your Fleets. They are as public as regular tweets, and can be in any format, be they text, image or even video. It will also have sticker support added at a later date. Though you cannot like or retweet Fleets, despite all their similarities with ordinary tweets. And also, most importantly, they’re gone after 24 hours.
On one hand, Fleets may be an outlet for people’s thoughts that are, for lack of a better phrase, not well thought through. With their disappearing nature, they won’t get piled on with a ton of replies. But nothing is stopping other people from taking a screenshot and then piling on that instead.
(Source: Twitter)
