Twitter launched their version of Stories last week (called Fleets) – some initial thoughts:
- I think the Stories format fits Twitter better than any other social network because it’s actually quite similar to how Tweets work. Both Stories and Tweets are modularized content. They work as stand-alone micro content (Tweet / Fleet) or can be grouped into a bigger piece of content (Tweet storm / Story) with sub-discussions for each element.
- The difference between the two formats is that Tweet discussions are public whereas Fleets will drive more usage of private discussions via Twitter DMs. This is a good thing. Twitter DMs are the most underrated part of the site (and probably the best shot any company has at disrupting LinkedIn). I just wish Twitter had improved DMs before driving more users to it.
- When Instagram launched Stories, it saw that users posted less to the newsfeed – which they reserved for their best / most important photos. I wonder if we’ll see a similar trend on Twitter, but I doubt it. Tweeting photos and videos was never a great user experience, mainly because of the weird way Twitter auto-crops them, so I don’t think we’ll see cannibalization between the two formats.
- The animation when swiping between Fleets feels clunky. Instagram Stories feel 10x smoother.
- The creator tools for Fleets are by far the biggest disappointment. Twitter had a real chance to build something new here (personally, I think audio would be a *really* interesting format). Instead, it’s just a very limited version of other Stories features.
- The Stories bar is great UI real estate for other features: I really hope Periscope will make a comeback. The rumored audio rooms would also fit nicely here.