‘Fleets’ Feature to be launched by Twitter Globally
By: Ashwathy Nair
- Before rolling it out globally, the feature was tested in Brazil, Italy, India, and South Korea.
- The feature ‘Fleets’ cannot be retweeted and they won’t be having ‘likes’.
- The new feature, ‘Fleets’ is similar to Instagram and Facebook stories.
A new feature is going to be launched by Twitter that will disappear tweets in 24 hours. The feature will be known as ‘Fleets’ globally that will be echoing social media platforms such as Snapchat, Instagram, and Facebook that already have this feature of disappearing post.
The company states that the short-lived tweets that are termed as Fleets due to its fleeting nature, which are intended to relieve the concerns of new users who may be hindered by the public and permanent nature of normal tweets.
The feature ‘Fleets’ does not allow to be retweeted and it won’t have any option to ‘like’. People are supposed to respond to the fleets through replying to the original tweeter via direct messages. Before rolling the feature out globally, the feature ‘Fleets’ of Twitter was first tested in Brazil, Italy, India, and South Korea.
The executives of Twitter, Joshua Harris (Design Director), and Sam Haveson (Product Manager) stated that the new feature known as ‘Fleets’ is a lower pressure approach in order to communicate fleeting thoughts as opposed to permanent tweets.
The news arises the same day when Jack Dorsey, the CEO of Twitter and Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook had faced questions from a Senate Judiciary Committee regarding how they tackled disinformation surrounding the presidential election. Action taken against disinformation has been stepped up by both platforms.
Last month, Dorsey and Zuckerberg had promised lawmakers that they would be aggressively shielding their platforms from being manipulated by foreign governments or using them to provoke violence around the election results, and they followed through with high-profile measures that alarmed the United States President Donald Trump and his followers.
The new feature is similar to Facebook and Instagram stories and Snapchat’s snaps, which allows its users to post photos and messages for a short period of time. A feature like this is increasingly common among social media users those are looking for smaller groups and more private chats.
