Months after being rolled out for all users, micro-blogging site Twitter is shutting down its Instagram Stories-like 'Fleets' feature from August 3.
Fleets are disappearing tweets that sit in a row at the top of users' Twitter handles on smartphones. These ephemeral tweets expire after 24 hours.
"In the time since we introduced Fleets to everyone, we haven't seen an increase in the number of new people joining the conversation with Fleets like we hoped," Ilya Brown, Twitter's vice president of product, said in a statement in July.
"We hoped Fleets would help more people feel comfortable joining the conversation on Twitter," Brown added.
From August 3, the Twitter users would only see active Spaces which are live audio chat rooms at the top of their timelines.
During the time that Fleets was available full-fledged, the micro-blogging site had added multiple new features to it, including the possibility of adding GIFs, stickers, change the text colour and more.
According to Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, the company started Fleets not to build a storage product within Twitter, "but to solve the problem of people not wanting to tweet because they appear to be staying around too long”.
Twitter had launched Fleets globally in November last year to give people a new way to join the conversation and share momentary thoughts. People could Fleet text, reactions to Tweets, photos or videos and customise their Fleets with various backgrounds, stickers, and text options.
In April, Twitter reported that its ad revenue grew 32% (year-on-year) to $899 million, and total ad engagement jumped 11%. "We certainly have seen a different audience than we normally see, but we still have much to learn and a lot to figure out in terms of like, where it goes from here," Dorsey had said.