Twitter fleets were a welcomed development to the growth and productivity of Twitter but 8 months after its launch, a shocking revelation was made to its audience that the tiny bubbles that played host to the circles with either text, videos, GIFs, stickers or photos would be gone, come August 3rd, 2021.
This was a snatched dream from a young entrepreneur. Unexpected and a big blow to everyone who depended on the space as a pro-sumer. Many tongues have asked why was this short-lived, and what’s the next step.
READ ALSO: The announcement to the end of fleets here
The tweet which ushered in the announcement and ended with a note to the “new stuff” it was working clearly showed that the mini blog site had those fleets as a trial and error. It seemed as a foreseen failure but, why drop hen when the eggs are yet to be hatched?
The twitter fleets would have posed to be a competition to the Facebook story, Instagram reel and WhatsApp status. Something that’d have aided in creations, boosting and sells of content, bridging the gap between producers and consumers, but it was too good to be true.
There were a few outlined reasons as to why the fleet failed and these are enumerated below;
1. Twitter attributed one of its failing grace to low usage. This was true but the question is, was there a point for interactivity as experienced on WhatsApp, Facebook and Instagram? The fleets only permitted two forms of reactions; a heart and a thumbs up. So, why complain when it already had limited features for not an envelope to convey a message? Also, many people never paid much attention to it as a result of its absence to textual interactivity.
2. The innovation seemed too quick and unprepared. What might been a good comeback or competition to other social apps wasn’t well thought out. Yes, it was good to certainly have a feature to highlight either your day or share a concrete note worthy of sharing but the urgency to drop and present cancellation clearly shows its unpreparedness towards it.
3. No placement for saving a fleet unlike or a highlight section. Unlike the social network apps like Facebook and Instagram, where stories and fleets can be saved, or used as a highlight to build up your story as either an individual or brand, fleets were a one-off thing. After the duration of 24 hours, it is gone without a space to save (storekeep) for future use.
4. Fleets seemed to be as a copycat feature hence the earlier claims to low usage. We have already been exposed to the world of Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Snapchat and a host of other spaces, so, having a similar lookalike feature seemed as a waste of time. An abstraction from the real creativity meant to be seen and enjoyed.
Twitter has grown to be one to own and host a lot of trust, so, lessons ought to be learnt from these highlighted loopholes to avoid it ending like MySpace in future. Its participatory features should be looked into more, to avoid a crack down of the entire mini blog site. .
