Social meda sites like Twitter allow us to share our thoughts with the world, no matter how fleeting. But we don’t necessarily want to commit all of our thoughts and ideas to permanency. That’s why Fleets were introduced: To give users a way to share their lives ephemerally, with photos and videos that expired after a set time. Fleets are gone, though, leaving some feeling disappointed in the loss. Are Fleets ever going to come back?
Are Fleets ever going to come back to Twitter?
It appears as though Fleets will never come back to Twitter. Instead, Twitter VP of Consumer Product Ilya Brown says the team will use lessons learned from Fleets to enhance other parts parts of the service.
This detail was mentioned over on the official Twitter blog. The post mentions that Fleets are no longer available as of August 3, 2020. It does not say that Fleets will never return, but the rest of the post heavily implies that the feature is gone for good.
Largely, this seems to be based on how users actually used Fleets. Twitter says the bulk of its use was to increase visibility to standard Tweets, or to share photos and videos quickly. Instead of keeping the Story-like feature around, the Twitter team will instead work to incorporate simpler media sharing features through the Tweet composer. Otherwise, Spaces will still occupy various slots at the top of your Twitter timeline.
The team is looking to learn from Fleet ads, as well. Ad tests ended last month, and they’ll use the information gathered from the test to better tailor ads to users. These were full-screen, vertical ads, of course, and not everyone was particularly fond of them.
Fleets are gone, and by all accounts, it seems they won’t be coming back to Twitter. The Story-type feature simply wasn’t hot enough to keep around. Thankfully, you can still enjoy ephemeral messaging and time-locked stories on Snapchat, Instagram, and Facebook.
