Twitter has officially announced that it is testing a new feature called Fleets in India, which is very similar to Stories on Instagram.
Fleets allow users to post content on their profile which disappears after 24 hours. The content posted doesn’t have the option to receive likes, retweets nor public replies. Users can share texts, photos and videos on Fleets.
Just to be clear, Fleets are public and can be viewed by anyone, but will have lesser visibility compared to tweets. Also, it will be available for everyone in India on Twitter for iOS and Android in the coming days in updated app versions.
If you want to see someone’s Fleet, you can directly go to their profile and view the content but it will not be displayed on Twitter’s public feed. Also, it cannot be embedded on other websites.
How To Create a Fleet
- Tap the profile image on the top left to create a Fleet.
- Type what you want to post or add any images/videos.
- Tap the ‘Fleet’ option on the bottom right to post.
How To Engage With Your Follower’s Fleet
- The options to reply and react to a Fleet are available when the Direct Messages option is open.
- Followers can send replies via DMs or react to the Fleet using emojis.
- Replies and emojies will appear in the DM inbox along with the Fleet.
As per the feature introduced in Brazil, users are able to post videos up to 2 minutes and 20 seconds in length (or 512MB). On the other hand, publishers can publish videos up to 10 minutes in length.
Twitter’s version of Instagram Stories works a bit differently when you're viewing the content. In order to view the next Fleet, you’ll have to swipe down instead of the conventional tap on the right side of the screen (like on Instagram).
To see the next user’s Fleet, you’ll have to swipe left.
As per Twitter, these gestures can change as per the feedback it receives from users.
Twitter says that they are testing this feature to provide people with a new way of conversing on the platform since it learned from research that people don’t Tweet because Tweets are public.
The social media platform tested the feature earlier in Brazil and Italy and India is the third market the feature comes to.
Twitter is one of the last major platforms to have a Stories feature on its platform where Instagram, Facebook, YouTube and even dating apps like Bumble have already implemented it.
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