Twitter’s Launch of Fleets: Lag, Some Crashes, Bugs, Skepticism and Cat Pics

CNET reports on Twitter’s rocky rollout of “fleets” which disappear after 24 hours: In a blog post, Twitter said global tests of the feature indicated the tool helped people feel more comfortable joining public conversations on the service. “Those new to Twitter found Fleets to be an easier way to share what’s on their mind,” the company said. “Because they disappear from view after a day, Fleets helped people feel more comfortable sharing personal and casual thoughts, opinions and feelings.” And, apparently, sharing cat content. “Don’t really care for fleets,” one wrote, “but the fact that 90% of the ones I’ve seen so far have cats in them brings me joy….” The feature’s debut Tuesday brought its share of complaints about the product, with some people saying the Fleets froze, lagged or made their Twitter crash. “We’re aware of some issues people may be having and are working to fix them,” a Twitter spokesperson said. “Earlier this week, Twitter officially rolled out Fleets, a new feature that — ahem — takes inspiration from Instagram Stories and Snapchat Stories,” writes Android Central, “and boy do people have opinions on it.” But users should warm up to the feature eventually, experts tell NBC News: [A]lthough users lambasted Fleets…those same users began to use the function almost immediately. While there are valid critiques of Fleets and how they could be used in regard to misinformation and harassment, experts say the users’ first reaction will typically be to resist changes to a site or app that they’ve grown accustomed to, even though they typically adopt the change as the preferred version of the platform later on. Yet by the weekend Twitter was already acknowledging its first major bug with fleets, exploitable “through a technical workaround where some Fleets media URLs may be accessible after 24 hours,” according to The Verge: The “workaround” referenced appears to be a developer app that could scrape fleets from public accounts via Twitter’s API. The Twitter API doesn’t return URLs for fleets that are older than 24 hours, according to the company, and once the fix is rolled out, even if someone has a URL for active fleet, it won’t work after the expiration point. The Verge also points out that “while fleets are only visible on users’ timelines for 24 hours, Twitter stores fleets on its back end for up to 30 days, longer for fleets that violate its rules and may require enforcement action, the company says.”