Twitter ‘slows down’ Fleets rollout over performance issues

Twitter is “slowing down” the rollout of its new disappearing posts feature, known as Fleets, in order to fix performance issues, the company has said.

Fleets – short for fleeting moments and designed to disappear from Twitter after 24 hours – were introduced earlier this week as a new form of communication on the social media platform.

But Twitter has now confirmed it needs to reduce the speed of the rollout because of issues with the new tool, which is similar to the Stories feature found on platforms such as Instagram.

“We’re slowing down the rollout of Fleets to fix some performance and stability problems,” the company said.

“If you don’t have the feature yet, you may not get it for a few more days.

“We love that so many people are using Fleets and want to ensure we’re providing the best experience for everyone.”

The performance and stability issues have not been specified by Twitter.

The launch of Fleets followed a trend in social media of disappearing messages, made popular by Snapchat and its self-destructing posts, before Facebook’s range of apps, including Instagram and WhatsApp, began introducing Stories – collections of posts which disappear after 24 hours.

When discussing the launch of Fleets, Twitter executives admitted the format “may sound familiar”.

The company said it had designed Fleets to help users feel more comfortable participating on the platform in a “lower pressure way” without the need to worry about retweets and likes.

“We’ve learned that some people feel more comfortable joining conversations on Twitter with this ephemeral format, so what they’re saying lives just for a moment in time,” said Twitter’s Joshua Harris, director of design, and Sam Haveson, product manager, in a blog post on the feature.