Twitter Fleets: What is it, how it works and who all shall get it

Fleets is a quick way to express thoughts using multimedia or just simple text.

Twitter introduced on June 9 a feature named Fleets for Android and iOS platforms. Inspired by the Stories feature on Instagram and Facebook, Fleets is a quick way to express thoughts using multimedia or text. Thoughts shared on Fleets disappear automatically after 24 hours.

Let’s look at what Fleets offer, how it works and who all shall get it:

Twitter Fleets: Story-ies behind it
Twitter is about people posting their views, engaging with others by commenting on a post, 'liking’ it or showing support by retweeting a post. Twitter is public by design, but some users may not feel comfortable with that because their tweets anybody can see and reply them.

To enable people to express their thoughts without the anxiety of how others would take it, Twitter introduced Fleets on March 4 in Brazil. The Fleets feature seems inspired by Stories feature on Instagram and Facebook. It allows people to share thoughts in the form of text, multimedia and multimedia with text on it. Though the Fleets are visible to everyone, it disappears after 24 hours and do not get retweets, likes, or public replies -- people can only react to your Fleets with direct messages. Moreover, instead of showing up in people’s timelines, Fleets are viewed by tapping on your avatar.

How Twitter Fleets works

If you have posted Stories on Instagram and Facebook, it would be easy for you to know how the Fleets work. For those who have not, the Twitter for Android and iOS platforms now show a new strip on the top with your avatar, followed by tiny circular photo-icons of people you follow. You can swipe from right to left to see who all have shared Fleets recently.

Soon, Twitter might let you choose who replies to your tweets: Details here

The feature is currently being tested only with a limited group of people globally on Twitter for iOS, Android, and twitter.com.

Twitter is testing a new feature that let you choose who can reply to your Tweet and join your conversation. The feature is currently being tested only with a limited group of people globally on Twitter for iOS, Android, and twitter.com.

The feature allows Twitter user to set the reply preferences before posting a tweet. Those eligible to test the feature shall be able to choose who can reply with three options: everyone (the default setting), only people you follow, or only people you mention. Tweets with the latter two settings will be labeled and the reply icon will be grayed out. However, people will still be able to view, retweet, retweet with comment, and like these Tweets.

This feature is a new addition to several other features that the micro-blogging platform is exploring to improve the platform’s conversation handling capacity. Earlier, Twitter rolled out a feature that allowed users to edit tweet replies, if they were considered offensive or have hate content, before publishing.

“When things get heated, you may say things you don't mean. To let you rethink a reply, we’re running a limited experiment on iOS with a prompt that gives you the option to revise your reply before it’s published if it uses language that could be harmful.” tweeted Twitter Support.

The prompt will come as a pop-up on tweets which carry harmful content and Twitter artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) tools will try to catch such hate words first-hand.

Good news! Twitter is working on ways to launch 'edit' option for tweets

We have to make sure that we are actually solving the predominant reason why people would do it first and foremost, says Jack Dorsey.

Twitteratis have been asking for an edit button for the longest time. But that may still be some time away as the company does not want to "rush it" and will take a considered view of a use case for allowing individuals to make changes to their tweets.

"We have been considering edit for quite some time but we have to do the right way. We can't just rush it out. We have to make sure that we are actually solving the predominant reason why people would do it first and foremost and not making something that is distracting or takes anything away from the public record...," Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey said.

Speaking at a townhall at IIT-Delhi, the top executive said many users have been asking for the edit button because they want to correct mistakes like spelling errors or adding the wrong URL.

"...that's a lot more achievable than allowing people to edit any tweet all the way back in time...ultimately, we need to make sure that we are solving a real problem and solving a use case that people seeing as a friction in the service and making that easy for people," Dorsey said.

On his maiden visit to India, Dorsey met Tibetan spiritual leader Dalai Lama and Congress President Rahul Gandhi.

Addressing the students at an hour-long townhall, the Twitter co-founder answered a multitude of questions ranging from topics like best and worst decisions, changes needed in education system and impact of social media on youth globally.

In response to a question, Dorsey said the followers count no longer matters and users should rather focus on having meaningful conversations.

Having founded Twitter with Noah Glass, Biz Stone, and Evan Williams in 2006, Dorsey said the follower count was designed to encourage engagement on the platform.

"...we made it (follower number) bold and the font size a little bigger than everything else on the page and we didn't think much and we moved on to the next thing to create.

"What that has done is we put all the emphasis, not intending to, on that number of how many people follow me. So, if that number is big and bold, what do people want to do with it? They want to make it go up," he said.

He further said: "It may have been right way back then 12 years ago but I don't think it's right today...I think a more interesting number is how many conversations do you contribute to in your network, how many healthy conversations do you have".

Talking about bad decisions made, Dorsey spoke of how he -- in the early years of the company -- was afraid of letting some "amazing" engineers as he feared that doing so would bring down the platform even though these staff had negative attitude.

He reminisced that six months later, when some of these people were let go, the site indeed went down but also some other team members stepped up as leaders in the situation.

Business Standard