Twitter ditches ‘fleets’ stories feature – but what will replace it?

After eight months, Twitter is saying goodbye to its ‘fleets’ feature

The social media platform will ditch its Instagram stories copycat. Starting on August 3rd, users will instead just see active Spaces — Twitter’s live audio chat rooms — at the top of their timelines.

Twitter’s decision to scrap its stories feature isn’t just an admission that the feature didn’t work, but goes to show that the company still hasn’t figured out how to get people onto the platform.

Twitter’s history of struggle

For years, Twitter has struggled to get new users to post regularly and not just consume other people’s tweets. Fleets was its shot at using Stories, the popular social media format invented by Snapchat and further popularised by Instagram, to lower the pressure around tweeting.

Twitter’s Vice President of Product, Illya Brown says, “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 Tweets and talk directly with others.”