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Kudos to Twitter for pulling the plug on a high profile feature that wasn't working out. I saw some reasonably interesting Fleets at first, but it quickly devo

Kudos to Twitter for pulling the plug on a high profile feature that wasn't working out. I saw some reasonably interesting Fleets at first, but it quickly devolved into a low-effort self promotion feature as they noted: > 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 Eventually I stopped clicking on them because I knew I'd see the Tweets during my normal scrolling anyway. I suppose this problem is inherent to Twitter, where Tweets are already low effort enough that they didn't need another feature for rapid-fire, low-effort content. Contrast with Instagram where people's posts are generally well thought out, but their stories are made for rapid-fire content. Twitter didn't have the same divergence, so Fleets and Tweets became the same content in different formats. And of course, the Twitter self-promoters took full advantage of a feature that let them bubble their content to the literal top of people's feeds.

mdoms 5y ago
Most fleets in my timeline were solely to make fun of fleets.
btown 5y ago
The one thing that Fleets had going for them, that I think Twitter needs more than anything, is the fact that they are fleeting. Many people, myself included, are afraid to tweet something inane on main, lest we forget to delete it (or lest it be archived by a crawler), and have it taken out of context years later in a way that might damage our careers. But it doesn't follow that "something is fleeting, therefore it is deserving of the rarest real estate on the screen." And the read-between-the-lines reason is that now it's Spaces that are more deserving of that real estate. "Ephemeral Tweets" are something that should be experimented with separately, perhaps as an option on a normal tweet and prioritized within the algorithmic timeline itself... but reusing the Fleets branding and presentation probably isn't the right way to do it!
- netcraft 5y ago
  Ive always wished to be able to put an expiration on tweets. There are a lot of things that dont need to live forever. Here in the south if I go a couple hours without looking at twitter sometimes ill have to scroll through lots of weather related tweets for a current storm system that I would have loved if I was watching twitter at the time, but are useless to me now. And maybe they dont get deleted, but just dont show up in others timeline, but would if you went directly to that account - so replies and all are preserved. (I think something similar could be done to focus a tweet to a geographical area, but I digress)
  - skinnymuch 5y ago
    Yes. Not just for your example, but sometimes it’s obvious a tweet only matters in the moment or doesn’t matter. All of these cases would be great if the tweets were somehow archived or put away (like skipping your email inbox)
- polm23 5y ago
  There are already plenty of 3rd party services to auto-delete tweets after any condition you can want to specify.
- skinnymuch 5y ago
  Fleets can be screenshotted, no? You said tweeting something inane. Others on here have said they’re afraid to tweet at all. If the worry is that high, then the worry of a Fleet screenshot being taken out of context should probably be enough to not allow you to do that either.

mdoms 5y ago

Most fleets in my timeline were solely to make fun of fleets.

btown 5y ago

The one thing that Fleets had going for them, that I think Twitter needs more than anything, is the fact that they are fleeting. Many people, myself included, are afraid to tweet something inane on main, lest we forget to delete it (or lest it be archived by a crawler), and have it taken out of context years later in a way that might damage our careers. But it doesn't follow that "something is fleeting, therefore it is deserving of the rarest real estate on the screen." And the read-between-the-lines reason is that now it's Spaces that are more deserving of that real estate. "Ephemeral Tweets" are something that should be experimented with separately, perhaps as an option on a normal tweet and prioritized within the algorithmic timeline itself... but reusing the Fleets branding and presentation probably isn't the right way to do it!

netcraft 5y ago
Ive always wished to be able to put an expiration on tweets. There are a lot of things that dont need to live forever. Here in the south if I go a couple hours without looking at twitter sometimes ill have to scroll through lots of weather related tweets for a current storm system that I would have loved if I was watching twitter at the time, but are useless to me now. And maybe they dont get deleted, but just dont show up in others timeline, but would if you went directly to that account - so replies and all are preserved. (I think something similar could be done to focus a tweet to a geographical area, but I digress)
- skinnymuch 5y ago
  Yes. Not just for your example, but sometimes it’s obvious a tweet only matters in the moment or doesn’t matter. All of these cases would be great if the tweets were somehow archived or put away (like skipping your email inbox)
polm23 5y ago
There are already plenty of 3rd party services to auto-delete tweets after any condition you can want to specify.
skinnymuch 5y ago
Fleets can be screenshotted, no? You said tweeting something inane. Others on here have said they’re afraid to tweet at all. If the worry is that high, then the worry of a Fleet screenshot being taken out of context should probably be enough to not allow you to do that either.