The Twitter fleets tested in Brazil are very similar to the Snapchat or Instagram stories. - TWITTER

It's almost surprising that Twitter took so long. Twitter launched on Wednesday in Brazil a test phase of "fleets", messages that disappear after 24 hours and cannot be shared or "liked", a format similar to the "stories" of Snapchat and other social networks .

"We hope that the fleets will help people share their fleeting thoughts (fleeting, in English, editor's note) that they might not have wanted to tweet," said Kayvon Beykpour, group product manager, on the network.

I know what you're thinking: “THIS SOUNDS A LOT LIKE STORIES!”. Yes, there are many similarities with the Stories format that will feel familiar to people. There are also a few intentional differences to make the experience more focused on sharing and seeing people's thoughts. pic.twitter.com/OaGYZpChcN

- Kayvon Beykpour (@kayvz) March 4, 2020

He admitted that this format was very similar to "stories", the visual thumbnails, usually with a photo or video, that remain visible for only 24 hours. They were created by Snapchat in 2013, and then copied by Instagram (2016), Facebook (2017) and even YouTube and LinkedIn (2018). The difficulty with Twitter is that we sometimes follow thousands of people. A priori, we will only see the fleets of his friends (who also follow us and to whom we can already send private messages).

No like or retweet

"People often tell us that they are not comfortable because anyone can react in public to their tweets or because there is this aspect of permanence and performance (how many likes and retweets 'Am I going to get it?), ”detailed Kayvon Beykpour, also co-founder of Periscope, a live video application acquired by Twitte in 2015.

The “fleets” will be visible by clicking on the bubbles of the avatars of his contacts, placed at the top of the screen. Users can only react to it by private message. Unless, of course, take a screenshot of the "fleet" which can thus be shared both on Twitter and on any other platform.

The twitter network had acquired in February Chroma Labs, a story creation application founded in particular by John Barnett, who had created the "Boomerang" (loop videos) functionality for Instagram.

  • By the Web