Is the new disappearing story feature of Twitter Fleets making way for better conversations?
In March 2017, the founder of Instagram, Kevin Systrom, had already made plans to clone the popular feature of Story present in Snapchat and use it on their platform of Instagram.
Following this very bold and brave move taken by that team of American business, the popularity and usage of Instagram immediately shot up while that of Snapchat fell face flat. Very soon it was seen that the story feature was implemented across most social media platforms including Google Photos, Tinder, LinkedIn, Facebook, and others.
On the other hand, this story feature was unavailable on one major social media platform. That is Twitter. Jack Dorsey, the CEO, was the first person who conceptualized this feature of Twitter Fleets to be used as a method to share messages similar to the instant messaging AOL and the disappearing status feature. Finally, in March, Twitter Fleets made an appearance as ephemeral stories. After giving it a test run in India and Brazil, Twitter rolled out this disappearing messaging feature all across the globe on 18th November 2020.
Twitter Fleets Pros And Cons
Kurt Wagner stated that the executives of Twitter claimed to have researched and reached the conclusion that numerous users feel overwhelmed by posting or having a conversation with other Twitter users. The entire process of tweeting and re-tweeting can be sort of intimidating and terrifying. As a result, the officials were quite unsure about the entire response to Twitter Fleets.
The news feed of Instagram was a space for uploading and sharing beautiful and immaculate photographs by the users. The Instagram stories were a way of sharing less serious posts. Similarly, Twitter Fleets have the same role.
Twitter is bound to face great advantages from introducing the Fleets feature. First of all, this is a very familiar and known feature. Most users have simultaneous social media accounts and, therefore, they have a good idea of this ephemeral messaging feature newly introduced as Twitter Fleets. Secondly, Twitter Fleets have an in-built facility for sharing videos along with photos. Third and finally, Twitter Fleets stay for 24 hours and users can post anything random without regretting it later.
The disadvantages are that this feature is available everywhere and other platforms are way ahead of Twitter in making new additions that are attractive and user-friendly.
Twitter Fleets has also copied the one-tap response using emoji from Instagram. Though this feature is almost 2 years old, Twitter has just recently added this to initiate healthy conversations.
Better conversations can happen by replying privately. Also, people can say things in a more free and open manner through private DMs.
Old conversations and photos have a way of sustaining in social media and clogging recent feeds. Twitter Fleets will help unclog traffic.
