Everyone still wants to know when we’ll be given the option to edit our tweets.
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey discussed the idea in a new interview with Joe Rogan, and how the feature could look on the platform.
“You could build it as such so maybe we introduce a 5-second to 30-second delay in the sending,” Dorsey told Rogan around the 1:20 mark. “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.”
Dorsey shared that Twitter is working on figuring out a way for users to see the original tweet, before the edit. But since the platform is essentially a social media of record, he has to give adding the feature some thought. Dorsey thinks that editability might be dependent on context.
“If you’re in the context of an NBA game, you want to be fast and you just want to be in the moment. You want to be raw,” he said, adding, “But if you’re in the context of considering what the president just did or making a particular statement, then you probably need some more time, and we can be dynamic there.”
Twitter’s functionality derives from SMS, or texting, which is why the platform doesn’t include an edit function.
“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,” he said.
However, Twitter chose to increase the character limit on tweets. Like a text, tweets were restricted to 140 characters; however, in 2017, that number doubled to 280.
Hopefully, this means we might still see the feature soon.
