Twitter is testing its own version of Stories, called Fleets, letting users post ephemeral content that disappears after 24 hours.
In a not-so-distant future, every single social media platform will offer a version of Stories (if they don’t already.) Twitter is no different, after announcing that it will begin testing a new sharing format called “Fleets.” Starting in Brazil, the feature will let users post ephemeral content that cannot receive Likes, Replies, or Retweets – before disappearing after 24 hours.
UPDATE: In May, Twitter started rolling out Fleets in Italy as well.
Related | LinkedIn Starts Testing Its Own Stories Format
Fleets will sit at the top of a user’s profile and you can view them even if you are not following a user. The new feature is meant to address a concern many Twitter users have: they feel uncomfortable tweeting because of the platform’s public nature. This is why “Fleets” won’t appear in the Twitter feed, they won’t show up in Search or Moments, and cannot be embedded on external websites.
Twitter users in Brazil can see the usual round Story icons at the top of their Timeline, but those who are part of the test will be able to post video content of up to 2 minutes and 20 seconds in length (or 512MB).
Whitelisted publishers will be able to publish videos up to 10 minutes in length.