The Fleeting Rollout of Fleets

Twitter has halted rollout of its new "Fleets" functionality just a few days after launch.

Reports of the Twitter app hanging and crashing would appear to be at the root of the problem, although the overall reception to the new feature has also been less than lukewarm.

Fleets are a strange addition to Twitter, especially with a user base who have been vocally crying out for functions to edit tweets, see better analytics on the performance of their tweets, and manage the contents of their feed. A clear copy and paste job from the Instagram "stories" feature, it would appear that Twitter decided it needed this functionality to compete with its pictographic rival from Facebook.

Given that Twitter exchanges can tend towards the more forthright in some instances, providing Twitter users with tweets that self destruct, leaving no trace on the network, is also a potentially dicey decision. It really is a gift to anyone wanting to spread misinformation, fake news, or abuse on the network... and maybe thats the bigger problem.

If Fleets turn out to be a bad idea, will Twitter be bold enough to roll them back completely?