In a move that brings the firm closer in competition with the likes of Snapchat in Instagram, Twitter (NASDAQ: TWTR) has introduced Fleets, which allows users to post short, "disappearing" videos to their Twitter feed. The feature stumbled on its first day of operation, being plagued with slowdowns and bugs that irritated users.
The announcement and launch of Fleets took place on Tuesday, starting with a tweet and a post to Twitter's blog. Fleets is similar to Snapchat's Stories feature, and similar derivative features seen on Instagram and Facebook (NASDAQ: FB). Fleets, a term used by Twitter for the intent to share "fleeting thoughts" using the new feature, being able to share text, reactions, or videos that expire after 24 hours.
"Twitter's purpose is to serve the public conversation - it's where you go to see what's happening and talk about it. But some of you tell us that Tweeting is uncomfortable because it feels so public, so permanent, and like there's so much pressure to rack up Retweets and Likes," Twitter said in its blog post. "Today, we're launching Fleets so everyone can easily join the conversation in a new way - with their fleeting thoughts."
Confounding the launch of Fleets, however, was the litany of issues that plagued it upon launch. Right on day one, users reported that posted Fleets were lagging and that their Twitter app was even crashing while trying to use Fleets. The slowdowns and crashes are obvious signs of heavy load on the app, likely a sign that either Twitter hadn't anticipated the traffic that Fleets would receive or didn't prepare adequately.
Other glitches have been reported as well, with some users reporting that their Fleets were visible by users that they had blocked. Concerns have also been raised that Fleets are not being moderated, as some users have noticed hate speech and other controversial content being posted as Fleets without being taken down.
Twitter's share price didn't seem to react much to the release of Fleets; it can even be argued that it didn't react at all. On Tuesday, when Fleets launched, Twitter managed to squeak by with a 0.8% gain, while on Wednesday, Twitter gained about the same and managed a 1.1% gain on Thursday. Looking at the behavior of Twitter's share price over the few days since Fleets' launch, it's apparent that Investors either aren't excited by Fleets or don't know what to make of it.