After 16 Years, Twitter Is Lastly Including Its Most-Requested Characteristic. This Is Not Going to Finish Nicely

Twitter is unusual. By most measures, it is the smallest of the key social media platforms. It has fewer customers, much less income, and nowhere close to as many options. Alternatively, it has all the time occupied an outsized position in influencing public conversations. 

To some extent that is as a result of, in contrast to different networks, Twitter is–with a number of exceptions–far extra public. Anybody can comply with President Joe Biden or Elon Musk or Taylor Swift or Lebron James if you wish to know what they’re as much as. The identical is true for almost each well-known and influential individual. It is also true for much less well-known individuals. 

Twitter additionally generates a disproportionate quantity of consideration in contrast with different platforms due to its real-time nature. Certain, there’s an algorithm, however it’s very easy to only scroll via what individuals are sharing because it occurs. That makes it one of the vital highly effective instruments for sharing and spreading information in actual time.

Additionally, the service is usually the identical because it has been for the final 16 years. Sure, there have been new options, and the interface has advanced, however for probably the most half, Twitter remains to be the identical place you go to see “what’s occurring.” After all, one factor an unlimited variety of customers appear to agree on is that Twitter is lacking its most evident function: an edit button.
 

Now, nevertheless, Twitter says it’s including that very function. In a weblog submit on Thursday, Twitter confirmed that it’s presently testing the function internally and that customers may very nicely begin seeing edited tweets of their feed within the close to future. The function is meant to be extra broadly accessible to customers who pay for Twitter Blue, within the subsequent few weeks.

It is true: Edit Tweet is being examined by our staff internally. The take a look at will then be initially expanded to Twitter Blue subscribers within the coming weeks. On condition that that is our most requested function so far, we wished to each replace you on our progress and offer you a heads up that, even for those who’re not in a take a look at group, everybody will nonetheless be capable to see if a Tweet has been edited.

Twitter says an edit button is the platform’s “most requested function so far.” It is virtually comical that there is not one already. Certain, for those who discover a typo, you may all the time delete a tweet and submit a corrected model. The issue is that by the point you notice you made a mistake, you may have already got individuals who have replied to, appreciated, and even re-shared your tweet. 

There are a number of causes there’s by no means been an edit button earlier than. One is that Twitter was constructed on SMS technology–text messaging. Initially, you may actually ship a tweet by sending a textual content message. That protocol would not embody the power to edit messages, so Twitter did not have it both. Technologically, Twitter could not give customers an edit button. 

After all, Twitter is not nonetheless primarily based on SMS know-how, and I am unsure anybody has tweeted by way of textual content message for most likely a decade. 

The larger purpose there isn’t any edit button is that Twitter has all the time gave the impression to be in opposition to it on precept. “We’ll most likely by no means do it,” mentioned founder and former CEO, Jack Dorsey, in an interview in 2019. 

One of many important causes appears to be Twitter’s outsized affect in shaping information and conversations about vital matters. You can make an argument that permitting tweets to be edited may introduce all kinds of content material moderation issues. I suppose that is true, however I will merely level out that Fb discovered the right way to let individuals edit posts, and for all of its issues (and there are various), edited posts aren’t certainly one of them.

Regardless of its recognition, I feel the edit button is a horrible idea–though not for both of the explanations talked about above. Actually, it is exactly that the edit button is such a standard request that I’d argue Twitter is wading into treacherous water.

Why? As a result of, if Twitter will get it improper, lots of people will probably be very upset. And, for those who’ve been on Twitter, nicely, ever, you understand that its customers virtually ever agree. That makes the job even more durable since it doesn’t matter what Twitter does, some (most likely massive) variety of individuals will suppose it is improper.

The truth is, that there is a distinction between what customers suppose a function ought to do, and what the individuals who design and construct it suppose it ought to do. The latter group is restricted by the design and technological limitations concerned with constructing features–something customers actually do not care about. They only need it to do no matter they suppose it ought to do.

If it would not, they will be disillusioned. They usually’ll most likely be extra disillusioned than they’re already that it would not exist. Does Twitter really want that proper now? 

Here is the factor, as a lot as I feel Twitter ought to have an edit function, the truth that it is taken so lengthy means there’s virtually no approach this ends nicely. If Twitter will get it improper, virtually everybody will probably be mad. If it will get it proper, fewer individuals will probably be mad, however the expectations are so excessive, it can certainly be a letdown. 

When you’ve spent years pondering that the factor that can repair Twitter is an edit button, you are going to be very disillusioned to study it is nonetheless the identical dumpster hearth, simply with fewer typos.