NEW YORK, United States – Twitter said on Wednesday it will shut down its ephemeral posts feature called Fleets on August 3 after the product failed to gain traction with users.
The shutdown comes just eight months after the social media platform rolled out Fleets to all its users globally, and just one month after it began testing advertising within the feature.
In a blog post on Wednesday, Twitter said it had not seen an increase in the number of new users posting Fleets as it had hoped.
In a tweet announcing the decision, Twitter wrote “we’re sorry or you’re welcome,” tacitly acknowledging mixed user reactions to the feature.
Kayvon Beykpour, head of consumer product at Twitter, stressed that this is part of how the company works.
“(Big) bets are risky and speculative, so by definition a number of them won’t work,” he tweeted. “If we’re not having to wind down features every once in a while, then it would be a sign that we’re not taking big enough swings.”
Fleets are reminiscent of Instagram and Facebook “stories” and Snapchat’s snaps, which let users post short-lived photos and messages. Such features are increasingly popular with social media users looking for smaller groups and more private chats.
But people use Twitter differently than Facebook, Instagram or messaging apps — it’s more of a public conversation and a way to stay up to date with what’s going on. Fleets, it turns out, did not make sense.
There was also a matter of the name. Called fleets because they were fleeting, the word is also a brand name for an enema — something many people pointed out on Twitter when the feature launched.
