Twitter launches disappearing tweet called’Fleets’

Twitter is expanding It is a version of Stories, a product that allows users to post photos and videos that disappear after 24 hours to encourage more sharing.

Twitter is testing a product called Fleets in international markets such as Brazil and India, making it available worldwide, including users in South Africa starting Tuesday. The company launched Fleets in March, taking advantage of Snap’s popular stories feature invented by Snapchat, and later Facebook spread around the world and copied it to all its apps.

Twitter also teased a new audio product called Spaces that acts like some sort of group voice call among users invited to participate, company executives said Monday. However, the feature is still in development and will not be tested until the end of this year, they said.

Both products are meant to give people more places to interact with each other on Twitter. This includes ways that are not public in the long term or appear in user profiles. Company executives have investigated and found that many users are too intimidated to post or engage with others on the service, and this has made an effort to find new ways to spark interactions.

“Tweeting, retweeting, and engagement in conversations can be frankly incredibly terrifying,” said Nikkia Reveillac, research director at Twitter. I don’t know.”

Advertising

Fleets provides another place for Twitter to sell ads, and this feature has benefited its competitors. For example, Instagram Stories is estimated to be responsible for 10% of all Facebook ads. Facebook reported more than $21 billion in advertising revenue in the third quarter. A Twitter spokesman confirmed that the company is considering putting ads inside its products, but it is not doing so yet.

Audio is another area of ​​interest for Twitter this year. We launched an audio tweet product in June to allow users to record. Twitter’s new Spaces feature is similar in concept to Clubhouse, a startup that has garnered attention in Silicon Valley. This app creates virtual hangouts for those who want to exchange ideas or discuss a specific topic but provoke criticism for not spying on the chat.

“The audio is interesting to us,” said Kayvon Beykpour, Product Manager at Twitter. “When you can hear someone’s voice, you can empathize in a more difficult way.” — Kurt Wagner, (c) 2020 Bloomberg LP Report