Twitter’s most desired feature may be close to becoming a reality. At some point, users may finally get an edit button for Tweets.
Twitter CEO, Jack Dorsey revealed to Joe Rogan in a recent interview that the brains behind the social media platform are working out the logistics of adding an edit button to Tweets. Dorsey explained that an edit button defeats the purpose of the spontaneity and authenticity of Tweeting, but the feature is easily one of the most requested updates, so it is now being considered.
We’re looking at exactly that. The reason we don’t have edit in the first place is we were built on SMS, we were built on text messaging. Once you send a text, you can’t take it back. So when you send a tweet it goes to the world instantaneously. You can’t take it back.
Jack Dorsey, Twitter
You could build it as such so maybe we introduce a 5-second to 30-second delay in the sending. And within that window, you can edit. The issue with going longer than that is it takes that real-time nature of the conversational flow out of it.
Users, for the most part, simply want the ability to edit spelling and grammar errors. However, Dorsey’s fear is that users may vastly alter original thoughts with access to an edit button. If Twitter instated the feature, there would likely be an edit history available so users can see original Tweets and how many times they have been updated.
There is no word on when the edit button may become available, but this is information gives us hope that the feature is on its way. Twitter has made several welcome updates to its platforms lately due to user demand. These include reinstating the chronological timeline and introducing a dark mode for the desktop site.
