Twitter is getting rid of disappearing Fleets on August 3

Twitter is moving away from ephemeral content. 

Sarah Tew/CNET

Twitter is planning to shut down Fleets, a way for users to share texts, photos and video that disappear in 24 hours, because the tool isn’t as widely used as the company hoped. 

Fleets will no longer be available starting Aug. 3, Twitter said in a blog post on July 14. The move shows that Twitter is moving away from ephemeral content that rose in popularity after the arrival of Snapchat, followed by Facebook-owned Instagram introducing Stories in its apps. 

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“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,” Twitter said in the post.

Twitter introduced Fleets in 2020 and made them globally available in November of that year. 

On Monday, some Twitter employees and users were bidding farewell to Fleets. Paul Stamatiou, who led the design of Fleets, said the company wanted Fleets to be “raw and authentic” and “feel lighter than tweeting.” “We were testing a hypothesis and not everything goes as you plan,” he tweeted. 

today’s the last day of fleets before it gets shut down

i lead fleets design as we moved to a more camera-first design before our global release. it’s not the first time a project of mine is getting sunset; i’m not bummed. you gotta separate yourself from the work https://t.co/S2TWlWhgt0

— Paul Stamatiou (@Stammy) August 2, 2021

In its blog post, Twitter said it learned through its rollout of Fleets that people enjoyed sharing media and that it planned to test a full-screen camera, text formatting options and GIF stickers in the tweet composer. The company also said it would continue to highlight its audio chat tool Spaces at the top of the timeline.