Sunday, November 22, 2020

Twitter Launches "Fleets"

Lagging long after its competitors, social media giant Twitter has launched a new feature called "Fleets" - their version of the Facebook or Instagram Story - a temporary piece of content, such as photos or videos or text, that exists for 24 hours and then disappears. The feature is meant to encourage more frequent interaction and engagement with Twitter. They initially rolled out the feature to select markets, including Brazil, India, Italy, South Korea and Japan, and have now rolled it out globally.

As is expected when a new product launches, there were a number of bugs in the feature that the company has been working to fix. For example, Fleets were failing to disappear after 24 hours and were still accessible long after they were meant to disappear. Users were able to view and download people's Fleets without the poster being notified that their Fleet had been viewed or downloaded. 

Reactions to the new feature have been mixed, from some users hating it to others loving it - which was the case with Instagram Stories as well, which did not meet especially positive reception upon its launch. However, it is a widely used feature now and I can see the same happening for Twitter as well. 

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