Fleets’ existence could have been more than fleeting

Introduced 8 months ago, Fleets the short-lived messages/story feature from Twitter will become history when it is discontinued on August 3.

Fleets never became as popular as similar features from competitors like Snapchat who invented it, and Instagram which copied and popularised it. But did Twitter position and promote Fleets in a way that would have made it as popular?

According to Twitter, “Although 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 own Tweets and talk directly with others.”

This is exactly where Twitter seems to have missed a trick and a great opportunity.

Common folk like me use Twitter mainly to follow influencers/celebrities and organisations - be it Federer, Obama, Elon, Colbert or BBC. I have seen such influencers using the Fleets feature to highlight a particular tweet of theirs or an upcoming engagement in which they are involved. Citizenry who follow a bunch of influencers from various fields could be quickly updated by these Fleets especially if they did not have the time to go through their respective timelines.

By focusing on possible new users, Twitter ignored what Fleets could have meant to the Twitter influencers. Twitter could have positioned ‘Fleets’ as the feature for existing influencers on Twitter to amplify their activities. Twitter could have shown the influencers how best to use the Fleets feature for optimal results. Once Fleets gained in popularity, it could have become an ideal platform to run ads driving revenue. In this regard, did Twitter check with existing influencers before deciding to discontinue the feature? Or was it a unilateral decision? ???

With a little bit of imagination and creativity, Fleets could have been afforded a much longer existence during which time its utility and commercial viability could have been properly evaluated.