It is one of the darker thoughts
and feelings one might have in this day and age of prevalent social media
platforms: what if there are some social media posts I made in the past that I
regret and want gone, but I can’t find them from the clutter of my online
activity and – well, somebody found it first? The desire to want online posts
gone after a period of time is the driving force of “ephemerality” in some social
media services. Snapchat and Instagram made this prominent with their
24-hour-only “Stories” posting feature, something that Twitter is imitating
now.
Tech Crunch reports that Twitter has finally decided to try out
giving their signature 280-character Tweet messages the “ephemeral” option,
allowing posts designated as so to disappear 24 hours after they were put
online. In this fashion they are quite behind pioneer Snapchat and first
follower Instagram, but Twitter certainly knows how to grab attention all the
same. Their ephemeral posting featured, currently being tested in South America
especially Brazil, is known as the “Fleet” post, as in the word “fleeting,”
which is rather appropriate. At least that is one way to make it stand out
considering Twitter fleets are just Snapchat and Instagram Stories.
Here is the nitty-gritty
regarding how fleets work on Twitter. In addition to the 24-hour availability
before self-deleting, a fleet post cannot be Liked, Replied to or Re-Tweeted. Accessibility
to fleets for those who did not post them is also given some significant
limitations. They can be seen by others who would visit a Twitter user’s page
profile, whether they are followers or not. But these fleets are stuck in the
user’s own account and not included for online circulation. They are not
included in Twitter moments or Search results, and embedding them is disabled.
The fleet feature was the result
of surveys by Twitter on why some of its registered users never actually go
active in tweeting, due to their being used to horror stories of people’s
reputations and lives ruined because some questionable past post of theirs was
publicized. It is one of the options being considered for development by the micro-post
social media giant for helping users keep some entries quiet. Composing a fleet
is similar to a tweet in that it allows adding of photos/GIFs and videos,
despite the very lackluster interface being trialed in Brazil.
Brazilian Twitter users have been
able to “fleet” their ephemeral posts since Wednesday, March 4. The services
has not yet announced when it might become available in other areas, if it
becomes a regular feature.
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