Twitter Fleets turned out to be far more fleeting than many realized. The social media service says it pulled the plug on the experiment.
Late last year, I told you about Twitter Fleets, a new potion Twitter offered its users.
A typical tweet stays around forever — or until the user deletes them (and assuming no one takes a screengrab).
But Twitter Fleets were designed to disappear after 24 hours. (Assuming no one took a screen grab of them, either.)
And let’s face it: these days, someone’s always taking a screen grab of something!
ABC News compared Fleets to Instagram Stories, a feature on Instagram that likewise vanishes after 24 hours. Facebook now has its own version of Stories. That part doesn’t surprise anyone since Facebook owns Instagram.
As I said in my old post, no matter how much a platform claims it wants to be different, when one introduces a new feature, they all scramble to do the same.
So why are the Fleets already getting the ax? Twitter answered that question in a post:
Of course, we don’t know what the “new stuff” might be.
But I do know what the entire Twitter fan base hopes will be among that new stuff: a way to edit past tweets.
We’ve all made a typo in a tweet. It just happens. Once it’s up, you either have to ignore it or delete it and repost. But if your tweet is already getting a reaction, you may be loath to delete it.
So you’re stuck.
Twitter popped up in 2006. After 15 years, wouldn’t it be nice to finally have an edit option?
