Twitter
TWTR
recently announced the launch of its transient Fleets feature for iOS and Android users worldwide.
Fleets appear at the top of the Twitter app in round bubbles with the icon of the user who posted them at the center. Once posted, Fleets can be viewed for 24 hours before they disappear so other users can no longer access them.
Markedly, the company tested the feature in Brazil, Italy, India, South Korea, and Japan last week before rolling it out globally.
Key Highlights for Fleet Users
People can choose to post text, reactions to tweets with the tweet attached, photos or videos. They will also be able to customize them with background and text options.
Fleets can be viewed by swiping upward while a horizontal swipe takes users to the next fleet. People can respond to them but the replies show up as direct messages to the original tweeter and not as a public response.
A “Reply by DM” option will let users reply through direct message. Additionally, users will also be able to reply to these fleets by an emoji.
Fleets are designed to communicate fleeting thoughts as opposed to permanent tweets and also to serve the concerns of new users who might be skeptical or under pressure of public and permanent nature of normal tweets.
Twitter’s Fleeting Step to Gain Popularity
While Fleets function is similar to
Snap’s
SNAP
Snapchat model and the Stories function, which has been introduced to
Facebook
FB
, Instagram,
Alphabet’s
GOOGL
Google-owned YouTube, LinkedIn, and WhatsApp in the form of its Statuses, users will still be able to screenshot Fleets without the knowledge of the creator.
Such features are increasingly gaining popularity with social media users looking for smaller groups and more private chats and to post short-lived photos and messages. Markedly, the ephimeral feature of Snapchat has been major driver behind its growing popularity.
Per Piper Sandler’s 40th Semi-Annual
Generation Z Survey
, which draws conclusions from 9,800 teen respondents in the United States, with an average age of 15.8 years, Snapchat reaches 90% of 13-34 year olds in the United States, making it a larger platform than Facebook, Instagram and Twitter among this demography.
Meanwhile, about 25% of teenagers in the United States chose Facebook-owned Instagram as their favorite social media app. Facebook is looking for ways to monetize Instagram Stories and the addition of the Checkout feature to the platform is a step toward that direction. The feature allows Instagram users to browse and purchase products from 23 top brands in the United States, all within Facebook’s app.
However, the lack of advanced creation functionality and effects tools puts Twitter’s Fleets behind other providers with the only real advantage being the top of feed presence in the app, which could help it to generate interest and exposure.
Nonetheless, Twitter is rumored to have been working on collaborative Fleets, which appear in the Fleets row as a double-bubble display. Instagram currently provides co-streaming options, which produce a similar effect in the Stories bar.
Although collaborative Fleets are currently unavailable, they could provide a range of new formats for users, including interviews, real-time highlights from events and for brands to boost presence via influencers, partnering with well-known users to increase awareness and engagement.
Twitter’s initiatives to add features and focus on effectively tackling abuse issues are helping it expand its monetized user base. In its latest quarterly results, this Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) stock noted that average monetizable daily active users (mDAU) increased to 187 million in third-quarter 2020 from the previous quarter’s 186 million.
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