Twitter Confirms It's Shutting Down Fleets

Twitter's "fleets," tweets designed to appear in a prominent position in the timeline, and then disappear, are ready to do just that. After just eight months, Twitter confirmed today that they would be retiring the feature, which closely resembles an Instagram story, on August 3, 2021. The feature is being retired due to low use, although some of the more popular aspects of the feature will be incorporated into regular tweets, including some video editing capabilities. Fleets, which currently sit at the top of the Twitter timeline, are full-screen video tweets that expire after 24 hours. From the start, it seemed unlikely that fleets would keep pace with Instagram stories or Tiktok, which offer similar functionality.