In less than a year of debuting its disappearing tweets feature, Twitter will be shutting down “fleets” after reporting low usage among its online users. According to a blog post from the platform, Ilya Brown — Head of Product, Brand & Video Ads at Twitter — reports that Twitter has not seen growth among users making good use of the Fleets feature — which allows users to share thoughts, photos and tweets for up to 24 hours — since launching last November. As a result, the feature will be discontinued on Aug. 3. “We built Fleets as a lower-pressure, ephemeral way for people to share their fleeting thoughts,” Brown wrote. “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.” The blog post also states that...

Twitter has officially entered the chat. On Wednesday, Twitter announced that it will begin testing “Fleets,” a stories features that will allow users to share fleeting thoughts (get it?) by posting “photos, videos, and text that disappear after a short period of time,” says Buzzfeed . Similar to the popular Snapchat-created feature that Facebook, Instagram, and even Netflix have adopted, Fleets will be accessed through tapping a user’s avatar on their Twitter profile. These privately-shared mental musings cannot be retweeted or liked in the hopes that “those people who are not usually comfortable with Tweeting use Fleets to talk about the reflections that come to their head,” the company said in a blog post . Fleets are a way to share fleeting thoughts. Unlike Tweets, Fleets disappear after 24 hours and don’t get Retweets, Likes, or public replies– people can only react to your Fleets with DMs. Instead of showing up in people’s timelines, Fleets are viewed by tapping on your...