Twitter has stopped its ‘Fleets’ rollout - one day after launching it

Twitter has decided to temporarily pause the rollout of its newest feature, Fleets, only one day after launching it.

According to reports, users with the Fleets feature were experiencing difficulties with the app, with Twitter lagging, freezing and even crashing completely.

‘Slowing down the rollout’

The official Twitter Support account tweeted, “We’re slowing down the rollout of Fleets to fix some performance and stability problems. 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 responses to the tweet from Twitter Support outlined a less than enthusiastic response to the Fleet feature.

One person wrote, “Literally no-one asked for this. All we wanted was an edit button.”

Another tweeted, “The best experience for me would be the ability to hide them. Don’t like, don’t want.”

“We don’t want it. We want to be able to edit tweets for five minutes after they’re posted. We want better analytics. We want more consistency in our news feed. Stop fixing stuff that isn’t broken & adding stuff that no one asked for. If we wanted ‘stories’ then we’d use Instagram,” replied another user.

What are Fleets?

The new feature is similar to other features found on social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat - vanishing posts which are only available to view for a short period of time before they disappear forever.

Twitter explains, “Fleets are for sharing momentary thoughts - they help start conversations and only stick around for 24 hours.”

The message will appear when a user’s profile picture is clicked. Much like Instagram stories, there is no way to publicly comment or like the story, except via Direct Message.

Again, as with Instagram, you can share other tweets in your Fleets section, and add comments, emojis and hashtags.

Fleets can be found at the top of your Twitter home timeline, in a very similar layout to Instagram stories.