Twitter on Tuesday announced that it will start rolling out its new feature ‘Fleets’ in India that allows users to post ‘fleeting thoughts’ that will disappear in 24 hours. These ‘fleets’ cannot be liked or retweeted.
This is similar to the ‘stories’ first popularized by Snapchat which was later adapted by other social media platforms of Facebook – Instagram, Whatsapp and Facebook itself.
‘Fleets’ of account that one follows will appear on top of one’s timeline. To ‘fleet’, users will have to tap on the profile picture on the top left corner, type and/or post a picture or video and then tap on ‘fleet’ to post.
However, the option to reply to a ‘fleet’ will be available when Direct Messages (DM) is enabled. Followers will be able to react with an emoji or reply to the ‘fleet’. Replies and reaction will appear in DM just like how it does in Instagram.
The company said that that people are hesitant to tweet as they feel tweets are public, permanent and displays the number of retweets and likes. “We hope ‘Fleets’ will empower many more people to express themselves more freely”, the social media giant said.
Twitter is rolling out the feature in India, Brazil and Italy on test basis.
Fleets will be available for both iOS and Android in the coming days in the updated app versions.