Ever since Twitter launched way back in 2006, users have been asking for the ability to edit their tweets. And yet here we are, over a decade later, and nothing. We’re still stuck with the binary choice of leaving a tweet as it is, or deleting it in its entirety.
If you’re starting to doubt whether you’ll ever gain the option of editing a tweet, don’t despair. In a recent interview with Joe Rogan, Jack Dorsey, the co-founder and CEO of Twitter, revealed it’s still something the company is at least thinking about.
Jack Dorsey Talks Twitter With Joe Rogan
Dorsey spoke about an edit function for tweets in the context of expanding the character limit. He said, “We don’t have edit Tweets right now,” prompting Rogan to request “the ability to edit […] but also the ability for people to see the original”.
Dorsey’s response was to suggest Twitter is “looking at exactly that”. He then goes onto explain why Twitter doesn’t have an edit function in the first place. Which is all to do with the way Twitter started out powered by SMS text messages.
Still, Twitter has moved on since then, and Dorsey floated the idea of “a 5-second to 30-second delay”. This would give Twitter users a short window of time to edit a tweet without “taking the real-time nature and conversational flow out of it”.
If you’re an avid Twitter user, or even just a beginner looking to gain an insight, the whole conversation is worth a listen. The part about editing tweets starts at around the 1 hour 20 minute mark, and the video embedded above is set to start playing at that point.
Editing Tweets Shouldn’t Be This Difficult
This interview confirms that Twitter is still at least considering introducing an edit function. Still, seeing as in January 2017 Dorsey revealed that Twitter was “thinking a lot about” offering the option to edit your tweets, we won’t hold our breath waiting for it to happen.
Image Credit: Maryland GovPics/Flickr
Read the full article: Twitter Still Wants to Let You Edit Your Tweets