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Micro-blogging platform Twitter announced on Thursday that it is testing a new feature called ‘Fleets’ on its platform.
The feature is similar to the ‘Stories’ feature on platforms such as Snapchat, Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.
“Fleets are for you to share your ideas and momentary opinions. These posts disappear after 24 hours and have no Retweets, likes or public comments,” Twitter said in an official blog post detailing the feature.
Twitter is currently testing out the feature in Brazil since “Brazil is one of the countries where people talk the most on Twitter,” it said.
Twitter’s Fleets will be similar to regular tweets. However, other users will not be able to like, reply or comment on the fleets. Users can, however, respond to the Fleets through direct messages.
Fleets will be primarily text-based. Users can add GIFs, pictures and videos to the Fleets just like they would in a regular tweet.
“Like Tweets, Fleets are based primarily on text, but you can include videos, GIFs or photos in them. If you want to reply to a Fleet, click on it to send a Direct Message (DM) or emoji, and continue this conversation on your DMs. Your followers will be able to see your Fleets at the top of their Home Page, and anyone who can access your full profile will also be able to find your Fleets there. If your DMs are open, anyone can react to your Fleets,” Twitter further explained.
Fleets will become available for Brazil users during this week who can provide their feedback on the platform using the hashtag ‘#FleetsFeedback’
Depending on how the testing phase goes, Fleets will then be made available to other countries.
The announcement was not well-received by netizens. In response to Twitter’s announcement, Twiterrati began trending the hashtag ‘“RIPTwitter” on the platform with over 97,000 tweets, majority of them asking the platform to add an ‘edit’ feature instead, allowing them to modify their tweets.
Considering the popularity of the feature, other social media platform apart from Twitter are also trying out their version of ‘Stories.’
LinkedIn announced that it will also be testing out the ‘Stories’ feature on its platform earlier this month. Pete Davis, the head of content products at LinkedIn had confirmed the news with an official post on LinkedIn detailing the same.
“We're testing Stories. Here's how we're thinking about the ways the format will help kickstart the conversations and nurture the relationships that are core to everything that happens on LinkedIn,” Davis captioned the post.
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