Twitter Is Axing Fleets, the Stories-Like Feature Demanded by Activist Investors, Due to Low Usage ⇥ blog.twitter.com

Ilya Brown of Twitter:

We built Fleets as a lower-pressure, ephemeral way for people to share their fleeting thoughts. We hoped Fleets would help more people feel comfortable joining the conversation on Twitter. But, in the time since we introduced Fleets to everyone, we haven’t seen an increase in the number of new people joining the conversation with Fleets like we hoped. Because of this, on August 3, Fleets will no longer be available on Twitter.

You may recall that the Fleets feature was launched globally in November, reportedly due to pressure from Paul Singer’s Elliott Management though Jack Dorsey took issue with that characterization. I am not sure Wall Street is the best place to look for product ideas, but I admire Twitter’s willingness to experiment with copycat features apparently demanded by the same jerks who pushed Argentina to default. That’s innovation.