Avid Twitter users get it. We need an edit feature.
 
For the many times you committed a grammar or typographical error, you could only scratch your head and hope you can see that ‘Edit’ button somewhere someday.
 
We resort to doing either deleting the tweet and type it again, with all hopes that we get everything right the second time. Or probably reply to your tweet with an asterisk which connotes an erratum.
 
Nonetheless, both are just as exhausting and tiring and, at some point, useless.
 
Why can’t Twitter have an edit feature ?
 

The Possibilities and Impossibilities

December last year, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey was polling Twitter users on which feature would they want to see on Twitter. And to no surprise, the top suggestion was to add the ‘Edit’ feature.
 
However, Dorsey said that the company has been thinking about this but implementing so would be quite complicated. Their concerns are more of fake news or changing a tweet to change the context in just a spur of time.
 
This, according to Dorsey, might be a feature that news accounts, personalities, or (as he specially mentioned) President Trump might take advantage of to change not only the content but also the context.
 
But this doesn’t mean that things aren’t being considered on their headquarters.
 
They’re looking into a possibility of giving a person a small window of at most 5 minutes to edit a tweet. This is only useful for people who can spot their mistakes right away. What about those who don’t?
 
So they look into another possibility of recording a change or edit log that people can view so that they’ll know what has been modified from the tweet. Pretty much like Facebook. But this could gather a negative impact, especially on analytics. You got 5,000 likes – but which version of your tweet did these 5,000 people like?

Dear Twitter, We Need an Edit Feature

So far, editing a tweet is still a distant possibility.
 
But let’s look at it this way.
 
While we respect the beauty of a platform featuring 140 characters of wit, the edit feature is still a need.
 
Yes, there might be concerns about changing contexts, but we think that’s not giving the users enough credit than they should.
 
Twitter users are wise enough to filter messages they see on their timelines. They can pick them out and see right through the context of a tweet.
 
We believe we’re thinking too far ahead of a simple feature. Editing a tweet can benefit everyone especially with those who have fat-thumbs problems. A simple typo or grammar error and you’ll find yourself bullied or mocked in just a snap.
 
Twitter can role this out in beta and do a few test runs. They can just take it out of their apprehensions are indeed right.
 
But they cannot rule out its benefits of everyone. We need it. We all do. Despite everyone’s endless request, Twitter never gave us this one simple feature.
 
They can change the UI and all, but they can never change the fact that there’s a need for an ‘Edit’ feature.