New Delhi, India

Twitter is bringing Fleets, its version of Stories that lets users post ephemeral content to its social network, to India.

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Fleets are a new way to start conversations from the user's fleeting thoughts. These self-disappearing tweets will vanish in 24 hours and will not have retweets, likes or public comments. 

The feature finally brings Twitter at par with the likes of Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and WhatsApp, wherein users will get to post temporary updates on their Twitter profiles, which will last only for 24 hours. 

Also read: Twitter’s blue bird goes black to show solidarity with protestors in the US

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Any replies made to Fleets on Twitter will directly appear as replies in Twitter’s direct messages tab, which suggests that Twitter’s DMs may just become a more active place in the near future.

The company says it is still testing the feature, which is also available to users in Brazil and Italy.

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The initiative is a part of the tech giant's constant endeavour to make it possible for people ''to have conversations in new ways with less pressure and more control.''

India, the world’s second-largest internet market, is a key overseas nation for several American technology companies. Twitter had about 55 million active users in India in the month of April, according to mobile insight firm App Annie and shared by an industry executive. In comparison, Facebook has over 350 million monthly active users in India, and Google reaches just as large audience.

This is the first time in several years that Twitter is timely bringing a feature to India — or doing anything noteworthy in this Asian market, where its platform has been scrutinised for not taking swift action on spread of misinformation and abusive messages.

“India is important for Twitter since it is one of our largest and fastest-growing audience markets globally. We are excited to bring the Fleets experiment to India and make it one of the first three countries in the world to experience this new product,” said Manish Maheshwari, Managing Director at Twitter India, in a statement.

“From the test in India, we’ll learn how adding a new mode of conversation changes the way Indians engage on Twitter. It’ll also be interesting to see if it further amplifies the diversity of usage by allowing people to share what they’re thinking in a way that is light-touch and light-hearted,” he added.