They were invented by Snapchat, although many do not even remember. They spread, or rather they were copied, on Facebook services. From there to the whole world. We are in the era of the ephemeral. Kleenex content that ends up dying after a day. And nothing more leaden than a repetitive digital ecosystem. The «Story» format, posts that disappear after twenty-four hoursThey are also going to reach a social network that until now seemed to be free, Twitter.
The well-known micro-message network, founded in 2006, will incorporate this format among its functions throughout this year, although it will be baptized as “Fleets”. At the moment, only a few details have emerged. Mo al adham, Product Manager for Twitter in Brazil, says in a statement that “Twitter is the place where you talk about topics that interest you,” but “some people say they feel insecure tweeting because the messages are public and permanent.” The reason is clear: “We want to make it possible for you to have conversations on the platform in new ways, with less pressure and more control.”
Às pessoas no Brasil: we hope that you will test and gostem this new form of expressão no Twitter. We are eager to hear your opinion and understand how Fleets changes your experience on the platform. You can send me DMs. #FleetsFeedback
– Mo Aladham (@maladham) March 4, 2020
Brazil will be the first market to test this new bet of the American company, which manages more than 330 million accounts around the world. «Twitter is the place where you talk about topics that interest you. But some people say they feel unsafe to tweet because the tweets are public, permanent, “he says. What impact will it have? Is it a good idea or, on the contrary, will it cause the loss of essence of Twitter? Many questions still unsolved. Many of the functions introduced by the service have been inherited from interactions previously used by its users. The community invented the “retweets”, the “hashtags”, the “threads”. These options, which are now so common in the conversation, have partly altered the nature of Twitter, although it had stayed on the sidelines of some fashions.
Although many users tend to delete their “tweets” automatically or manually from time to time -there are third-party applications that allow this action to be programmed-, one of the platform’s secrets is to have served as a news report. From real time. From the moment live. And yes, in recent years it has been used to make a “tweet-newspaper library”, to confront past opinions with those of the present to air the shame of many users. Especially from political leaders. A badly given “tweet” has led to layoffs and rampant criticism. Will this end if “Stories” are used massively?
For known details, these “Fleets” will have the same length as the “tweets”, i.e. 280 characters. It will allow users to share messages in text, images and videos. With one caveat: they cannot be ‘liked’ or ‘retweeted’. Therefore, it will not have public comments. It will work as a communication, mass sending free of interactions. And, with it, useful for companies and politicians. “Share what you are thinking more comfortably,” he advances. Less positive and transparent for the citizen, although in this way certain “trolls” or rude users who do not respect the desired codes of conduct can be removed at a stroke. The test will start this week in Brazil and it is not ruled out that it will spread to other countries.
