Written by Joey Peng, Yong Lun Yeo and Benn Tan.

Twitter Launches Its Own Take on Stories With ‘Fleets’

Twitter has announced its own variation on Stories, which it’s calling ‘Fleets’

Users with the Fleets available will see a new, rounded profile icon at the top of their Twitter feed. If your connections have posted Fleets, they’ll appear in their own round bubbles, which is very similar to the common Stories format on Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, etc.

One of the key use cases for Fleets however, according to Twitter, is to provide users with a way to share that isn’t overtly public.

Fleets work to address this by providing a space where the content disappears after 24 hours, while Fleets also can’t be retweeted, liked or even replied to in public – people can only react to Fleets via DMs. That gives users more control over who can respond, based on their DM settings, while Fleets will also not appear in timelines, they’ll only be accessible on user profiles.

Once you’ve created your Fleet, you post it, and it will be viewable, after which you can add more Fleets to your Story. Fleets will be available on your profile, so their accessibility will be based on your profile settings. 

So, really, it is Stories, it’s just a slight variation in line with Twitter’s use case. Right now, Twitter is not offering more advanced features similar to those available on other Stories options. Fleets are only being made available in Brazil, where Twitter will conduct its initial testing.

Facebook Brings a “Smaller, Faster” Messenger to iOS 

Facebook’s Messenger might not be the go-to messaging app for most of us, besides the annual birthday messages and friendship anniversaries. Now, Facebook wants to change that.

Last week, Facebook rolled out a massive update for its Messenger app, bringing a new, streamlined and faster version to iOS users. Most notably, the ‘Discover’ tab has been removed, decluttering the app and narrowing your navigation options.

The new update is in-line with Facebook’s long-standing vision to simplify its messaging app. According to Facebook, the new Messenger version is said to start twice as fast as the previous iOS version while being one-fourth the size.

Streamlining its Messenger app is just a small part of Facebook’s bigger project – to integrate and unify all of its messaging functionalities on Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp. This would effectively mean you could (presumably) cross-post Stories across Instagram, Messenger and Whatsapp in the near future!

WhatsApp Releases Night Mode Feature at Long Last

One of WhatsApp’s most requested and widely anticipated features has finally been released! Fresh off the oven, Dark Mode will be rolled out on the latest versions of WhatsApp on both Android and iOS, within the next few days.

Source

To enable it, users can turn the feature on under their systems setting option, granting them a more comfortable reading experience and preventing that awkward light-up-the-entire-room at night moments.

WhatsApp announced the new feature would “reduce eye strain in low light environments”, focusing on 2 areas- readability and information hierarchy. Colours used will be closer to system defaults on both operating systems to minimize eye fatigue. The use of colours and certain design elements will also make important information stand out.

Disclaimer: Featured image taken from Search Engine Journal.