Twitter is one of the most popular social media platforms with a community which is arguably better than other platforms. With its short character limit, people need to be convey their message in a precise yet understandable manner. Lately, Twitter has been bringing a lot of new features to the platform.
For instance, a lot of people got doubled character limits last year and now, we have the ability to post uncompressed full-res images too. However, despite all of these additions, one feature that has been requested the most since the beginning has still not been made available on Twitter; the Edit Button.
We’re all prone to making mistakes especially when typing on our phones. Sometimes, it’s not even our fault and the phone’s auto-correct just decides to go rogue on us and frankly, no one has the time to proofread tweets.
While most other platforms like Facebook and Instagram have an option to edit your text after being posted, Twitter has refused to bring it to the platform. However, we finally have a response from the CEO of Twitter, Jack Dorsey himself.
The CEO of Twitter is not keen on adding the Edit button any time soon
In a Q&A video with Jack Dorsey that was posted earlier today, the question of adding an Edit Button to Twitter came up. Responding to the question, the co-founder of Twitter said that he was not thinking about bringing the requested feature to the platform any time soon.
Initially, the Edit button did not exist just because of the way Twitter worked. Back then, the tweets were sent as an SMS and obviously, once an SMS has been sent, it cannot be brought back and changed.
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While it is possible to bring the Edit Button to the website now that a different system has been implemented, it probably still won’t arrive to the platform. Why? Well, according to Jack, bringing the Edit button would mess with the originality and he’d like to ‘preserve the vibe’ that Twitter has always had.
However, after giving this vague answer, he did dive deeper into the issue and explained a couple of things to the viewers. According to Dorsey, the biggest problem with the Edit button on Twitter is retweets. He feels that once someone retweets a statement and the original author edits it, the tweet could lose all of its value to the person who shared it.
While other platforms also have share options with the original author being able to change the text afterwards, it just has not been misused as it could be on Twitter. In addition to that, Facebook also shows an Edit history, which could be a possible solution for Twitter’s edit button as well.
Another solution that has been presented multiple times is the 60 second rule. You get to edit your tweet within 60 seconds of it being posted after which, it gets frozen forever. While Jack Dorsey did acknowledge that this was a possible solution, he said that this would ultimately ruin the sanctity of the website as it is designed around ‘immediate’ news.
He then ended his answer by saying that while all of these solutions being presented are viable, they’d still probably never do it.
If you were one of those requesting the edit button, you would’ve been pretty disappointed to hear this response. However, he did not strictly say no to the option and we might actually get an Edit Button at some point in the future.
For now though, all we can do is keep requesting the feature and hope that Twitter gives in to our demands.
Do you think that Jack Dorsey’s justifications for not including an Edit Button on Twitter are valid? Let us know down in the comments below!