What Happened To The Twitter Fleet? And how to use Twitter spaces

Twitter Fleets: I think we can all agree that they didn't last very long. Twitter's announcement to remove Fleets came just 9 months after the feature's launch, mainly because it failed to engage less-active Twitter users on the platform as they had hoped.

In this blog, we'll explore what Twitter Fleets were, why exactly Twitter decided to phase them out, and the growth and potential of Twitter Spaces.

What were the fleets?

Twitter fleets were essentially Twitter's version of 'stories'.

For anyone unfamiliar with the concept of stories, they are a feature on social media platforms where the user can upload a photo or video in a narrative sequence format that disappears after 24 hours. It allows users to share what is happening in real time with their followers.

Stories were first launched by Snapchat in 2013 and users found them popular. It wasn't long before Instagram followed suit by launching Instagram Stories in August 2016, which now has over 500 million daily active users, with 86.6% of Instagram users posting Stories and 70% of users viewing them.

Twitter presented fleets as a low-pressure, ephemeral way for people to share their fleeting thoughts. Twitter users were able to upload images and videos from their camera roll or record new ones, share existing tweets, write text, add stickers, emojis, and gifs, and most importantly, simply share thoughts they might not want to summarize. A written tweet. . .

Where did the Twitter fleet go and why did Twitter take it down?

In July 2021, just 8 months after its initial launch, Twitter announced that it was saying goodbye to Fleets. They reported that while they hoped Fleets would help more people feel comfortable joining and participating in conversations on Twitter, they didn't see the growth they expected.

They said that Fleets was mostly used by people who were already tweeting rather than encouraging those who are more redundant on the app to be more active.

It's important that Twitter acted to remove a feature that didn't work as expected, rather than keep it; something other companies could learn from.

In a series of tweets, Kayvon Beykpour, head of product at Twitter, stated that “big bets are risky and speculative, so by definition, some of them won't work. If we don't have to cut features from time to time, that would be a sign that we're not making big enough changes."

Are Twitter fleets making a comeback?

Since Fleets was removed from user profiles on August 3, Twitter has been looking for new ways to help users engage more actively on the platform and is exploring more ways to address what stops people from engaging.

For those already active Twitter users who have taken advantage of the Fleets feature, Twitter has incorporated some of those popular features into their regular tweets. Now, users can customize their tweets with some additional camera editing features, like different text and GIF formatting tools.

What are Twitter spaces?

The removal of Fleets does not mean that the top of the timeline will be empty. In November 2020, Twitter also launched Spaces, which are live audio conversations directly on the platform that allows for open, authentic, and unfiltered discussions.

When someone you follow is a host or speaker in a live space, a purple bubble will appear at the top of your timeline. Once you've joined, you can tweet or direct message the space, request to speak and react with emojis. Due to the nature of the feature, security controls have been implemented to allow Space hosts to mute their speakers, remove their microphones, or remove them altogether.

Twitter Spaces can be seen as a competitor to Clubhouse, the live audio chat app that launched in April 2020, shortly after the vast majority of the world went into lockdown due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Clubhouse gave users a way to stay connected with groups of friends, family, and loved ones in a much more personal and human way than regular social media platforms, but also much more private than video calls. Clubhouse reported that its weekly user base reached over 10 million people in the year of its launch.

Twitter has been looking for ways to monetize spaces for content creators. They recently opened ticketed slots apps that allow creators to create exclusive live audio sessions for their audience, where they determine the price of their ticket, which can be set from $1 to $999.

Fleets may not have been one of Twitter's most successful products. However, direct audio has gained a lot of traction as a new social media format since its launch, so it's no surprise that platforms like Twitter have developed similar features for their users.