Twitter started rolling out its ephemeral ‘Stories’ like feature called ‘Fleets’ globally on Wednesday, but was met with performance and stability issues, due to which the company had to slowdown the global rollout.
Twitter Product Lead Kayvon Beykpour said in a live video on Thursday, that most of the performance issues which caused the delay have been fixed and the company is expecting to complete the global rollout by Friday, according to a report by Reuters.
According to a recent tweet by the Twitter Support team, Fleets are now available globally, which possibly means that the rollout is complete. The tweet reads:
Fleet to the world. Fleets are now available globally on iOS and Android. https://t.co/mvXjbxr15R
— Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) November 20, 2020
Although the performance issues that were delaying the rollout have been fixed, there are some privacy and security concerns that have been raised by critics. The fleet authors can tag people who have blocked them, which is a security concern, as people can continue to get harassed or targeted by those whom they have already blocked.
There is also an increased likelihood of receiving unwanted personal messages, as anyone wanting to reply to a fleet will have to send a direct message. According to Reuters, the Twitter’s product chief said that these issues will be fixed over time, but some of them can be challenging to address.
Fleets are similar to stories on other social media platforms like Instagram, WhatsApp, and Snapchat. They can be accessed through the top bar in the Twitter timeline, which is also the home-screen of the app. Any fleets posted will disappear after 24 hours, and users can respond to fleets by sending a personal message rather than replying publicly.
The feature had already been launched in several parts of the world, including Brazil, Italy, South Korea and India.
