Twitter Tests Disappearing ‘Fleets’ In Brazil

Twitter is testing a new feature in the South American country of Brazil, that will allow some tweets to disappear after 24 hours.

Twitter is calling these tweets ‘fleets’ due to their fleeting nature. They are similar to the vanishing posts on Snapchat and Instagram Stories.

The test comes as Twitter faces upheaval in its corporate life. Activist shareholder group Elliott Management has taken a “sizeable stake” in the micro-blogging platform, and “plans to push for changes at the social media company, including replacing CEO Jack Dorsey”.

Twitter fleets

The testing of these disappearing tweets was revealed in a number of tweets by Twitter’s product lead Kayvon Beykpour.

He explained how the posts can be viewed by tapping on a user’s profile picture and people can only react to them with direct messages, making it essentially a private conversation, unlike conventional tweets which are public.

At the moment the trial is limited to Brazil, but ‘fleets’ may be deployed to other countries depending on how the trial goes.

“We’re hoping that Fleets can help people share the fleeting thoughts that they would have been unlikely to Tweet,” Beykpour tweeted. “This is a substantial change to Twitter, so we’re excited to learn by testing it (starting with the rollout today in Brazil) and seeing how our customers use it.”

Twitter is seeking to make its platform more user-friendly and attract more people.

The idea of ‘fleets’ are designed to help those users concerned about the public and permanent nature of traditional tweets.

It should be noted that fleets can’t be retweeted and won’t have any ‘likes’,

The Twitter ‘fleet’ bears similarities to Snapchat’s snaps and Instagram stories.

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has previous said he wanted to move “away from outrage and mob behaviour and towards productive, healthy conversation” on the platform.

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