Twitter the new Stories feature, "Fleets", seems to be grappling with the load. Launched this morning at Twitter's global user base, Fleets appears at the top of the Twitter app, allowing users to post ephemeral content that disappears in 24 hours and view stories posted by others. But user demand and curiosity for the new addition seem to have an impact on product performance. Many Twitter users report that fleets are lagging behind and moving slowly. Some also to say the feature is blocking their Twitter app.
Twitter acknowledged that ProWellTech is aware of the issue impacting some users and says it is working to fix the issue.
If you are among those affected, you will notice that when you tap or swipe to move between fleets, the screen will freeze temporarily or move incredibly slow. This might make it look like your phone is having trouble, but it's just the Twitter app.
Many users have already turned to Twitter to complain about the problems they are having. They often notice that they have just received the updated app with the new Fleets feature, but are unable to use the product.
The fact that Twitter is already overwhelmed by the demand from Fleet users could perhaps be a first sign of success. If users had no interest in the Twitter version of Stories, they might not even have bothered to update their app to try Fleets. Or they would largely ignore the row of stories at the top of their timeline and use the app as usual.
But not only does Fleets crash, it's also the # 1 trending term on Twitter at the time of writing, while Snapchat - the creator of the Stories format - is # 2. Users compare Twitter Stories to Snapchat in the their tweets and obviously complain that Twitter created this Stories feature instead of an edit button.
Meanwhile, the very word "Stories" is the trend term No. 4 and "App Store" is no. 18. This last sentence is mentioned in several tweets in which users ask others to download the updated version of Twitter from the App Store in order to access the Fleets function.
It's been a long time since the days of Fail Whale would have destroyed the Twitter network. In recent years, Twitter has become a remarkably stable app, especially considering the amount of real-time content posted on its platform and its use by world leaders. But with Fleets, Twitter seems to be struggling again and it's unclear how long the product will be affected.
Twitter has not yet posted publicly to acknowledge that some users have problems with fleets or when they expect the product to stabilize.