San Francisco, California - Twitter is removing its disappearing posts feature – Fleets – after less than a year on the platform because of low usage.

Introduced last November, Fleets were designed to offer a Twitter-based alternative to the popular Stories feature on rival apps such as Instagram and Snapchat, where users can post content that vanishes after 24 hours.

Twitter said it had hoped Fleets would encourage people who were anxious about tweeting to join in conversations on the platform more easily, but has now found the feature is most commonly used by those who are already tweeting the most.

As a result, the company confirmed it will remove Fleets from the social media platform on August 3 and focus instead on building other ways for users to participate.

Twitter head of product, brand and video ads Ilya Brown said: "We built Fleets as a lower-pressure, ephemeral way for people to share their fleeting thoughts.

"We hoped Fleets would help more people feel comfortable joining the conversation on Twitter.

"But, in the time since we introduced Fleets to everyone, we haven't seen an increase in the number of new people joining the conversation with Fleets like we hoped. Because of this, on August 3, Fleets will no longer be available on Twitter."

Brown added that the company will look into "more ways to address what holds people back from participating on Twitter" and is not afraid to experiment with other new tools.

"We're evolving what Twitter is, and trying bigger, bolder things to serve the public conversation," he said.

"If we're not evolving our approach and winding down features every once in a while, we're not taking big enough chances."