Fleets, a feature similar to stories in Snapchat, Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, is now rolling for Twitter users in India. The feature was initially launched in Brazil and then was made available in Italy last month.
The feature is now being rolled out in India in a phased manner. Twitter has not yet revealed if it plans to have a worldwide release of the Fleets, nor has it given any timeline for its release in other regions.
Fleets aren’t private stories and anyone can visit Twitter profile and can tap on the profile of the user to view their “Fleets”. It cannot be liked, retweeted, or get a public reply and disappears after 24 hours. However, a user can DM from the Fleets page to have a conversation.
Manish Maheshwari, Managing Director at Twitter India, said in a statement: “India is important for Twitter since it is one of our largest and fastest-growing audience markets globally. We are excited to bring the Fleets experiment to India and make it one of the first three countries in the world to experience this new product.”
He also added that “from the test in India, we’ll learn how adding a new mode of conversation changes the way Indians engage on Twitter. It’ll also be interesting to see if it further amplifies the diversity of usage by allowing people to share what they’re thinking in a way that is light-touch and light-hearted.”
Twitter has also said that Fleets won’t get circulated on Twitter’s network. It won’t show up in Search or Moments, and it can’t be embedded on a third-party website. This is the first time in many years that Twitter is rolling out a major feature in the Asian market ahead of worldwide release.
