Rather than promoting discussion, the same engaged people simply posted more.
After introducing Fleets in November, Twitter is set to bin the disappearing content idea on August 3. Reasoning provided by the company in a blog post explained Fleets was intended to promote new people to contribute, but that did not happen. « Although we built Fleets to address some of the anxieties that hold people back from tweeting, Fleets are mostly used by people who are already Tweeting to amplify their own Tweets and talk directly with others. » the company said. « We’ll explore more ways to address what holds people back from participating on Twitter. And for the people who already are tweeting, we’re focused on making this better for you. » Responding to a Fleet was only possible via direct message. Twitter said it would test bringing elements from the Fleet composer into its standard tweet composer, such as full-screen camera, text formatting options, and GIF stickers. Instead of seeing Fleets at the top of user timelines, Twitter said the space would be occupied by Spaces. « If we’re not evolving our approach and winding down features every once in a while — we’re not taking big enough chances, » the blog post said. « We’ll continue to build new ways to participate in conversations, listening to feedback and changing direction when there may be a better way to serve people using Twitter. » Earlier this week, the company said it had enabled users to change who could reply to a tweet after it was posted, users previously had to select who could reply before posting.
