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Goodbye, Fleets

blog.twitter.com

31–40 of 306 posts

Re: Goodbye, Fleets

#31
The lack of innovation at Twitter, Instagram and Facebook is utterly baffling and points to a serious culture problem.

Feels there are rooms of people now just being paid to clone successful features from other apps and only after those apps have carved their place in the market, literally become followers rather than trailblazers.

In just a few years Instagram is going to seem completely old hat to anyone who didn't grow up with it, my 10 year old niece has a TikTok account where she makes weird minecraft and among us memes, she has over 2000 followers, I've never even heard her mention Instagram, not sure she even knows it exists.

Think Twitter will be relevant for longer just because there are less companies trying to compete but honestly the app that was mostly about reading short form text thinks the future of their platform is half being a voice chatroom? Why? Because Clubhouse the new hotness a few months ago? Again just panicking to clone other services as a feature within their app who cares if it makes sense or complements the platform, lets just pray our existing users opt for doing their voice chat in our app rather than going to that new app.

I'll admit IG managed to clone snapchat stories successfully and pretty much kill off Snapchat, but reels? IGTV? I no longer have any idea where I'm supposed to put my focus or post my content in that app.

Re: Goodbye, Fleets

#33
That's really too bad. I don't tweet much, maybe once a day, but I really liked using fleets, and lots of people told me they loved seeing them, in DM or @'ing: https://twitter.com/simonsarris/status/1415370626303504389

I want my timeline to be mostly thoughts and nice photography that people can go look at as they please, and I don't want to pollute it or waste follower's time with one-off stuff (like making pasta every night, or some weird looking bug, or funny sign, etc). Fleets allowed for that really well. I think its a mistake to look at how Big Accounts are using them and make decisions from there.

Re: Goodbye, Fleets

#34
post #4

> Although we built Fleets to address some of the anxieties that hold people back from Tweeting, Fleets are mostly used by people who are already Tweeting to amplify their own Tweets this is exactly my problem with Twitter. It's an even bigger echo chamber than FB. As much as I try, I can't seem to escape the oversaturated bubble of a handful of extremely loud mouthed tweeters and their ardent followers. Mix in the t…

Be selective in who you follow, and if you're following someone who shares interesting thoughts but retweets too much, you can turn off their retweets. That in combination with being judicious on the block button makes Twitter one of my favorite social networks.

Absolutely don't use the block button, they can tell you've blocked them and it can open yourself up to harassment. Use mute instead.

Re: Goodbye, Fleets

#35
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You really just need to follow one good Twitter account and they will usually retweet other people who are interesting and usually share a characteristic that led you to followed the original account.

Got it, so build a bigger echo chamber.

Or be judicious about who you give attention to. Over the last couple of years, I’ve made a concerted effort to follow smart people who I don’t agree with. Sometimes this has proven that I’m wrong and other times, it’s made me feel more secure in my own beliefs.

There’s a difference between smart and toxic. Some smart people are toxic. Others are smart and passionate. If you work to follow people like that and work harder to read their words with an open mind, great things can happen.

Re: Goodbye, Fleets

#36

The lack of innovation at Twitter, Instagram and Facebook is utterly baffling and points to a serious culture problem. Feels there are rooms of people now just being paid to clone successful features from other apps and only after those apps have carved their place in the market, literally become followers rather than trailblazers. In just a few years Instagram is going to seem completely old hat to anyone who didn't…

I actually quite like the lack of innovation on Twitter. It takes an enormous amount of restraint to keep saying no, and stick to a small, simple vision.

I would hate a hypothetical Twitter that turns into another Facebook amalgamation of 75 products.

Re: Goodbye, Fleets

#38

Twitter is great when it comes to transparency. I love how they included this >Although we built Fleets to address some of the anxieties that hold people back from Tweeting, Fleets are mostly used by people who are already Tweeting to amplify their own Tweets and talk directly with others. We’ll explore more ways to address what holds people back from participating on Twitter. And for the people who already are Tweet…

> anxieties that hold people back from Tweeting

Have they, like, asked people?

Also, do they need more people to tweet? It's not like the platform is short of content. Isn't there a role for the comfortable lurker?

Re: Goodbye, Fleets

#39

IMO this should be the default feature of Twitter. I can't think of anything I'd be SUPER embarrassed of in my Twitter history, but context is important and something I might have Tweeted 10 years ago would look bad today, maybe. Still, I make it a point to delete all my tweets after they're a week old or so. Not interested in my random musings living on for all of digital eternity.

In my opinion, there are a few issues with this strategy: - Your Tweets may be archived on another site anyway - You may delete a Tweet that others hold onto for spite (screenshot, archiver, etc.) and then you don't have the surrounding Tweets to link to in order to show context - If your good Tweets get linked to/embedded from other sources then those links will go bad I've found the only safe strategy with social m…

> I've found the only safe strategy with social media/society is just to be very careful/clear/explicit with what you Tweet in the first place so that it can't be taken out of context.

Twitter, as a medium, is anti-context. The UI, the character limit, the behavior of the most prominent voices on the platform, everything encourages you to post hot takes that require as little context as possible to drive engagement.

Being "careful/clear/explicit about what you Tweet in the first place so that it can't be taken out of context" is equivalent to not Tweeting at all.

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