Written by Aqil Nasri
It sure took them a long time huh?
After the rapid success of Snapchat, tons of other social media platforms, such as Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, WhatsApp, and even freaking LinkedIn, started copying the one thing that made Snapchat famous in the first place, their Snapchat Stories. These are short snippets of images or videos that play for just a few seconds before disappearing after 24 hours from the time of posting. Why people loved this format so much as the fact that users can still have that sense of privacy even after sharing something publicly.
Many expected Twitter to go down this route earlier in their lifespan, but it seems like they’re only joining the party now.
Twitter has recently announced that they are beginning a trial for a new sharing format called “Fleets”. This testing period will start in Brazil first, in which users over in that country will soon be able to post ephemeral content to Twitter for the first time ever. However, unlike normal Tweets, these new Fleets will not be able to receive Likes, Replies or even Retweets. Oh, and they’ll disappear entirely after a period of 24 hours. How exciting isn’t it?
While these new Fleets may seem to be as public as Instagram Stories, it still manages to maintain a higher semblance of privacy to users. Users are only able to view someone’s Fleets if they follow them or if they open that particular person’s Twitter profile. These new Fleets won’t circulate on Twitter’s overall network, show up in the Search function or show up in its Moments sections. Also, it can’t be embedded on external websites.
At launch, it is expected that users will be able to post videos up to 2 minutes and 20 seconds long or 512MB in size. Meanwhile, whitelisted publishers will be able to publish videos up to 10 minutes long. Users can also view multiple Fleets, in which viewers will move through using gestures. To view multiple fleets, users need to swipe down instead of tapping on the sides of the screen to go back and forth. To go towards the person’s Fleet, users will need to swipe left. This may prove to be annoyingly cumbersome for users in the future and may change based on user feedback.
Other than that, Twitter mentioned that it will determine which Fleets to display based on recency first and followed by mutual next.
Anyways, what do you think of this recent news from Twitter? Let us know below!
