What the Fleet!
Last week, Twitter globally launched Fleets for all devices. If you aren’t an avid twittterer, Fleets is an imitation of Snapchat’s and Instagram’s Stories feature. Ever since Snapchat developed this innovative way of displaying disappearing content, almost all social media apps have adopted this. From Instagram to Facebook to LinkedIn to Youtube. Since Twitter started testing out this feature earlier this year, there has been a tremendous vocal uproar about its introduction. Many valid, some not so. In this post, I hope to dissect Twitter’s foray into this space and also respond to some of Fleets’ criticism.
An official tweet from Twittter reads:
Since its introduction, there has been wide-spread discontent about Fleets. Have a look at the hashtag #FleetsFeedback and you’ll see what I mean.
And then there’s this from someone who is reputed in the domain of business and strategy.
Despite the number of retweets and likes, I find this tweet by Alec somewhat disappointing. It’s easy to make fun of Twitter based on this trend but this observation is superficial. Simply put, this is not how product management works! The who’s who in Twitter would’ve clearly tracked the evolution of Stories and its applicability to Twitter. Twitter may have criticisms over its “shipping” velocity but it by no way considers the product’s or business’s priorities. Every year is different. 2020 seems to be about Fleets.
While I won’t proclaim Fleets to be the best thing since nutella on sliced bread, let’s analyze this a bit further.
What’s Fleets’ value proposition?
Twitter is clearly trying to position Fleets, just the way Stories is positioned. Of late, Twitter has become a news outlet of sorts. For better or worse, it’s become a ground for political commentary. This shift from more “serious” engagement to more personal and casual conversations is something that I guess Twitter is hoping it’ll offer to its 330 million users. The fleeting nature of Stories make it more attractive for users to share personal feelings and thoughts.
According to an article on Verge:
Twitter hopes the new feature will help reduce the pressure around tweeting by letting users express more casual thoughts and feelings while also concerning themselves less with saying something profound or racking up likes and retweets.
While I understand the value proposition of Fleets, my gut feeling says that this looks good only on paper. The questions that immediately pop up are:
Where do the current Twitter base share personal/casual thoughts and posts?
Do Twitter users also use other social media apps? What’s the overlap?
If Twitter users are already habituated (and have an audience) for their personal/casual thoughts on Instagram/Snapchat Stories, why would they switch over to Twitter?
Perhaps, Twitter can learn from how Instagram effectively ripped off Snapchat’s stories and grew engagement by X%. What are those lessons? Are they replicable?
Ultimately, products do jobs for us. Twitter needs to understand what it does for its users. If you ask me, I personally don’t feel Fleets offers anything novel to Twitter users in its current form.
What’s the business impact?
Let’s talk business now. Fleets is another format for displaying Twitter content. Currently, you can write a plain text, send a gif, create a poll…now you can create content in the form of a Fleet. If you disregard the (questionable?) value proposition, Fleets actually opens up several avenues on how key business metrics can be impacted!
Ad revenue
With content in Fleets, there will be opportunities for targeted ad content. I’m being captain obvious here. According to their Q3 2020 report, 86% of Twitter’s revenues comes from ads. So there are no surprises here on what is riding on Fleets. Perhaps, the costs per impressions on Fleets will be higher than the average promoted tweet given the larger real estate on the screen.
mDAUs
Monetizable daily active users is the user metric that Twitter reports. Currently it’s at 187 million and its growth is less than 10% QoQ. The introduction of Fleets could mean that users need to be signed into Twitter to view them. Something similar to Instagram’s stories. What this could mean is that the casual visitor on Twitter profiles or hashtags, would be required to sign up or log in to view Fleets.
Slide into more DMs
Direct messages improve user engagement and retention. Replying and reacting to Stories is old news for Snap and Instagram. This is something Twitter probably hopes to capitalize with Fleets. DMs will improve retention (stickyness). The more sticky the users are on Twitter, the more opportunities there are for advertisers to target these users. Here’s Lenny (brilliant Product guy, ex-Airbnb) comment on Fleets.
Live streaming
Fleets could integrate Periscope’s live streaming capabilities. Periscope was acquired by Twitter in 2015. I’ve personally not seen Twitter as a live streaming platform. The preferred platforms have always been Twitch, Youtube and Instagram. Although I don’t see this becoming a reality for Fleets, it might be something Twitter will consider for the future.
I’m sure there are a few more angles that I’ve missed.
Conclusion
By goal with this post was to analyze (albeit cursorily) the introduction of Fleets. While there is tremendous business opportunity, a lot hinges on Fleets’ adoption by users. Its adoption in turn hinges on the value proposition of Fleets, which in my opinion is lacking at the moment. It’s currently a bland me-too feature which doesn’t offer something different from Snap or Instagram. It will be exciting to see how Fleets evolves in the coming months. I’m sure the product team has something brewing there.
Will I use Fleets? Not right now as I reserve my more personal/casual posts for Instagram Stories.