Twitter may have been one of the last major social media networks to adopt the Story format, and now it might be one of the first such sites to abandon it altogether.
The social media company has confirmed that as of August 3rd, Fleets will be confined to the dustbin of tech history – in its place on Twitter home pages, users will instead see a list of active Spaces instead.
The company cited – unsurprisingly – that users hadn’t taken to the format, and never truly reached the same pinnacle Instagram’s Stories have.
“We hoped Fleets would help more people feel comfortable joining the conversation on Twitter… But, 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”, said Ilya Brown, Twitter’s vice president of product.
Fleets was just 8 months old (in global rollout terms), and Twitter had only begun testing monetized ads in between story rolls a little over one month ago.
Brown added that “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.”
It remains to be seen whether Spaces will enjoy the same clout that Twitter hoped Fleets would. What are your thoughts? Are you sad or overjoyed to see Fleets depart the platform? Let us know in the comments below.
