Twitter Fleets now in India: On Tuesday evening, Twitter announced that the fleets are now being launched in India. The feature had earlier this year been launched in Italy and Brazil and has now been made live here. According to Twitter, this feature will be rolled out in a phased manner, and in the coming days, the feature will be available on iOS and Android platforms with version updates.
Twitter Fleets: What is it?
Similar to the stories feature of Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp, Twitter’s Fleet is a way for people to express their thoughts for a period of 24 hours. Seemingly deriving its name from a combination of fleeting tweets, the feature allows users to share their fleeting thoughts for a limited time, to which people can only reply in the DMs. This makes the idea of sharing their thoughts and opinions much less intimidating.
Twitter is known for people “trolling” or harassing others for their opinions, as a result of which several users often refrain from sharing their true opinions. As a solution to that, Fleet is a way for users to express their thoughts, without having to make it permanently visible on their profile.
Moreover, since the viewers of the Fleets would only be able to reply to the thoughts in the DMs, it would not make replies to the user’s thoughts public, making it feel a little safer.
Users would be able to view the Fleets of the users they follow on top of the screen, like on other platforms. Alternatively, they would also be able to see the Fleets of a user by going on their profile.
How to post Twitter Fleets?
- Similar to posting stories on Facebook-owned platforms, in order to post a Fleet on Twitter, a user needs to tap on their avatar at the top of the screen, where other Fleets are also visible.
- Upon tapping the avatar, the user can type what they want to share, or even share media. GIFS can also be shared in Fleets.
- Once the user has prepared the Fleet they want to send, they just need to click on the option ‘Fleet’ at the bottom right and the Fleet gets posted.
Users can also report a Fleet by tapping on the menu, in case the Fleeting thought violates the Twitter policy.
Twitter Fleet: Don’t want to see updates from a user? Here’s how to mute
A user has two ways to mute the Fleets from another user.
- The user can press and hold the avatar of the user and mute their Fleets directly from the Twitter timeline.
- Another way to mute a user’s Fleet is by going to the other user’s profile, and opening the menu option on the right and clicking on ‘mute’.
