Twitter to shut down fleets in August

Twitter on Wednesday announced it will do away with its Fleets feature on August 3.

The announcement means the company will shut down the feature it rolled out in November last year to compete with the stories features available in Facebook, Snapchat, and Instagram. The decision comes after the company announced in June it was beginning to test ads inside Fleets, a move that would have helped it monetize the posts.

This is a part of Twitter’s numerous and drastic changes to make the platform more sustainable in the long term. The company plans to focus more on its live audio conversations feature, Twitter Spaces.

https://twitter.com/Twitter/status/1415362679095635970

Fleets was an experimental feature launched as a way for users to share what’s on their minds.

“…Because they disappear from view after a day, Fleets helped people feel more comfortable sharing personal and casual thoughts, opinions, and feelings,” Twitter said in a blog post.

The feature is however being taken down as its intended impact is not being realised.

“We hoped Fleets would encourage more people to join the conversation, but that wasn’t the case. So we’re removing them and focusing on improving other parts of Twitter.” Twitter said.