Twitter To Kill Off Fleets Just Months After Launch

Twitter today announced that its Snapchat stories copy-cat feature Fleets is to be discontinued as of August 3, less than a year after the feature launched.

The ephemeral tweet format is shutting down due to low usage, as such users will instead see active Spaces — Twitter’s live audio chat rooms — at the top of their timelines.

“We hoped Fleets would help more people feel comfortable joining the conversation on Twitter,” Ilya Brown, Twitter’s vice president of product, said in a statement. “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.”

He also said that though Fleets had been build “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”.