From being a total social media outcast, I can safely say I have come a long way! 🙂 I am moderate social media user today and I am on most social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and more!! 🙂
After being on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, Quora, I have always had a few doubts about “why” certain things are the way they are on social media. Here is my major “why” 🙂
“Why” does Twitter not have an edit button?
When I first started using Twitter, I was just getting used to the platform. It was fundamentally different from LinkedIn which is mostly used for bolstering business relationships. On Twitter there was always a 180 character limit to “tweet” your thoughts and opinions. “Tweeting”, “Retweeting”, posting replies in a thread were all some things that I was getting used to.
In LinkedIn and Facebook, if I type something wrong after posting it, I could always re-edit it. But when I tried editing in Twitter, I couldn’t …why? Because there was no ‘Edit’ button in Twitter!! If you wanted to change your post(maybe a spelling mistake or you wanted to change it entirely after posting) you just had to delete it entirely…no edits were possible!!
I have always wondered why Twitter never added this functionality. I had read many social media posts as why this was not possible – but none of them were convincing enough for me.
Some of the thoughts were like this:
If a Tweet is retweeted and the original tweet is changed after retweeting, the original thought might be lost!! (almost feels like a tongue twister, right? :)) This was definitely not convincing enough for me as I thought there were many ways in technology to overcome it…
And I was also not sure if all us tweeting were posting malicious content – because some of us just want to change innocent things on a post, so we absolutely need an ‘Edit’ button…:)
So, what are your thoughts? Does Twitter need an ‘Edit’ button or not? (though it doesn’t seem to be coming anytime in the near future!! )
The previous post can be found here.
This is so very thoughtful and very practical query you have rightly pointed out. Even I was always annoyed at Twitter not having the ‘edit’ button. However, your contemplation and reasoning seem fair enough and put my mind at peace. Thank you for this share.
Nice post👍👍
I think Twitter does need an Edit option. You have addressed a really important topic Jayanthi. I have been thinking of this from a few days myself. Thanks for throwing light on this topic.
Happy A2Zing 🙂
— rightpurchasing.com
In current days where people are posting fake waiting till they get 10K RTs then quietly deleting it afterwards, i can’t imagine what a mess it would have been if editing was allowed. Nice take on the matter.