Twitter is developing its platform with tweets that disappear on their own. The new “fleets” are automatically deleted after 24 hours, they cannot be retweeted or given public likes. You can only reply to this as a direct message, but not in the timeline, as product manager Kayvon Keykpour explained at the global launch on Tuesday.

The The idea behind this is to take away the fear of twittering from users who are still reluctant. Tests in Brazil, Italy, India and South Korea showed that people who were new to Twitter or rarely tweeted had received the format well, Beykpour emphasized.

Stories as Tweets The format is based heavily on the “Stories” function of Snapchat, which has now also been copied across Facebook apps such as WhatsApp and Instagram. The word creation “Fleets” stands for “fleeting tweets” (fleeting tweets).

Twitter is experimenting with its classic formats like the 280 characters long text contributions including spoken tweets and voice direct messages.

(emw)