It predicated its decision on the little-usability of the features, stating it would rather focus on features that are being widely used by its billions of teeming users.
For example, Twitter had earlier this year introduced a new story feature called ‘Fleets’, an identical option to Facebook and Instagram stories but was welcome with a lot of ridicule and condemnation, leading to Twitter users boycotting the feature.
Twitter took cognizance of the negative feedback and announced that by August 3, the new feature will be removed, just eight months after its launch.
The San Francisco-based company said Fleets failed to excite users, as the number of people who joined the conversation through fleets was extremely low.
“Using our learning’s from Fleets, we’ll focus on creating other ways for people to join the conversation and talk about what’s happening in their world,” Twitter said in a statement.
The Fleets situation is just one of the features the micro-blogging platform took down, here is the list of other features it took down:
1. Periscope
Live streaming app, Periscope had a substantial decrease in usage and Twitter seeing that the costs were not in tandem with the accruing patronage, decided to bring it down.
The app which was discontinued in March 2021 had Twitter in a statement premising its decision on the fact that the app is in an “unsustainable maintenance-mode state.”
2. Twttr (Threaded replies)
Twitter had introduced Twttr to help easier and swifter conversations between users. In the site feature, a layout that showcased previous conversational replies with thin, grey lines had negative feedback form users who showed their inability to understand and configure the new site.
Twitter, not oblivious of this, announced that it would by December 2020 shut down Twttr in a statement which reads:
We appreciate the feedback you gave us through this run of our prototype app twttr. For now we’re turning it off so we can work on new tests to improve the conversation experience on Twitter. If you’re using twttr, switch to the main Twitter app to keep up with what’s happening. https://t.co/xq4emx9HeH
Twitter created the Application Programming Interface (API) to assist users read and write Twitter data, which will enable them compose tweets, read profiles, and access their followers’ data and a high volume of tweets on particular subjects in specific locations.
Twitter had in a blog post in 2018 said it would remove access to APIs needed to power push notifications and an auto-refreshing timeline. Rob Johnson, a director of product, said Twitter would stop supporting those APIs so it could focus on its own native applications
4. Twitter moments
Also in 2018, Twitter took down the ‘Moments’ feature that had earlier been designed to enable users curate stories by publishing a collection of tweets to show different perspectives on the same topic or event.
Twitter announced that “Twitter moments” will be taken down within iOS and Android Apps when it wrote on its Twitter support:
On October 23, we’re removing the ability to create Moments on the Twitter for iOS or Android apps. When features aren’t used as often, we’ll remove them, so we can focus on building other products you’ll love.
Vine, a free mobile app that enables users to record and share an unlimited number of short, looping video clips with a maximum length of six seconds was created to achieve a feel of nostalgic user experience but that was short-lived.
The micro blogging platform yanked off the ‘Vine’ feature in October 2015 as it said it wants to keep its costs low and trim down nine percent of its global workforce. Twitter claimed the cost of keeping Vine running was more than it could maintain.
One thing can be deduced from this, the feedback from the users will determine if a new feature stays or not. It doesn’t matter if the feedbacks are logical, but Twitter knows the power lies in the users who make up the numbers and has no option than to pay attention to the audience demands.
Ayoola Faseyi, an Abuja based Journalist with interest in Technology and Politics. He is a versatile writer with articles in many renowned News Journals.
He is the Co-Founder of media brand, The Vent Republic.
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