Late last year, Twitter launched its very own version of Instagram Stories, also known as "Fleets".

As of today, the company announced that it will be discontinuing the service.

Key Highlights

• Twitter announced earlier today that the company would be shutting down its "Fleets" feature later this year, after less than a year since its launch.
• The service will be available until 3rd August before being removed completely from the app.
  
• The news was announced in a blog post, which included reasons why the company is shutting the service down.

Why It Matters

• Fleets was meant to be Twitter's take to compete with rivals Instagram and Snapchat, but was unfortunately launched a little too late.
  
• Twitter's Fleets did not garner much usage, and according to the company, "we haven’t seen an increase in the number of new people joining the conversation with Fleets like we hoped".
• At present, both Facebook and Snapchat dominate the ephemeral vertical posting format that is widely popular with the younger audience today.
• Moving forward, Twitter will be experimenting with "bolder" features to create "other ways for people to join the conversation and talk about what’s happening in their world" — most likely starting with Spaces, a Clubhouse clone.