There are lots of tweets floating around today with the hashtag #TwitterEditButton, from people who think Twitter should implement the option to edit tweets after they’ve been published.
There’s no doubt that such a function would be useful. Whether it’s a simple typo or something potentially libellous, most of us will have regretted a tweet the minute it’s sent at some time.
That said, part of the appeal of Twitter is its real-time, ‘stream of consciousness’ nature. Having the ability to go back and edit what you’ve said could ruin the fun. Many a good story has come from someone who has tweeted too much accidentally. That said, those people have always had the option to delete their tweets, so an edit function wouldn’t be that much of a leap.
It would be sensible if there were some limitations in place. Maybe users could only edit their latest tweet for, say, ten minutes after initial publication. That would certainly be useful for perfectionists who spot a typo and want to change it quickly, or for people who mis-type a URL.
Would it be technically possible? Twitter already has the ability to undo retweets, and innovations like adding custom metadata to tweets are on the way. Bolting on an ‘edit’ function must surely be feasible. (Edit: a commenter below disagrees. We’d love to hear the thoughts of more people with a deep technical understanding of Twitter on this).
So Twitter, how about it?
No need, imho. Simply delete and post a correction, if needed.
Also, I’m pretty sure that it will never happen, due to the way the data is stored. But don’t quote me on that ;)
You can’t delete and you can’t edit when you have any applications which feed at or feed your twitter trough, it has to be right the first time.
But you don’t want people rewriting history so there would need to be a time limit. e.g. editable for the first 2-min only.
“That said, those people have always had the option to delete their tweets, so an edit function wouldn’t be that much of a leap.”
Incorrect. Twitter may seem like a simple concept, but in order to scale to the thousands of tweets per second that passes through it, it is a highly optimised system. Hence why there are only the create and delete operations. Once a tweet has been created, it is fairly easy to delete it. But to edit it would require distributing an update message system-wide, and ensuring it was synchronised across systems so that there are no conflicts. Indexes would have to be updated, which is computationally expensive at such scale. Additionally, streaming clients would have to be capable of receiving these “edit” updates in some manner, and all of *their* platforms would have to be updated with such functionality. Where a delete is simply a flag, edits are more complex. I would hate to count the number of services, databases, caches, lists etc. that would have to be updated should just one person edit one tweet.
That, and if you want to edit a tweet just delete it and tweet another one corrected.
Interesting, thanks Chris. Do User Streams make this more of a feasible idea?
So I retweet (using the retweet button) a tweet that states an opinion I agree with. Perhaps a tweet of a user who I don’t know but his tweet is quickly being spread on Twitter. Suddenly, the user who I retweeted edits his tweet to post the exact opposite of what he originally wrote, making everyone look like a fool (or worse).
This sounds like a bad idea.
I think whatever you have retweeted in such a scenario can stay in your time line. If the person does edit his tweet to the exact opposite of what he was saying earlier, that should not change all the retweets. I don’t think that should be very hard to implement. A retweet is just GONE, damage done. But a simple edit button can definitely be put. Facebook already has an edit comment button so no reason why twitter cannot do the same.
No need for edit .But there must be a SOS button for utmost emergency messages for help and it must be transmitted to whole twitter community via Twitter team approval.
Nah. Your messages are quickly pushed down on the stream anyway, just delete it and repost it. Or face the consequences of the typo.
Yeah i agree, just delete and repost it
Why not spend an equally useless amount of time trying to find ways to edit your emails or text messages after you’ve sent them.
Sorry but this is such a dumb idea – it goes against the very nature of what twitter is.
The thing is, emails and text messages are usually private. Tweets are usually public. Having an opportunity edit would be a good way of clearing up those embarrassing little slip-ups that occur. Why not just delete and republish? Well, sometimes tweets quickly develop a ‘life of their own’, with multiple retweets and replies. Deleting the original tweet will ruin the context of these responses.
I really don’t see this happening. I’m not a back of the shop guy, but I think from a technical point of view it would be pretty difficult.
Just be careful of what you say, delete the post and hope for the best.
If an edit option were available I would use it. But…If there were time restraints on that option…I wouldn’t use it…for the same reason I don’t use Googles Gmail …Google offers the undo option for emails up to 30 seconds. ..so what… My bigstring email lets me do that anytime I want…even after the email has been opened.
Besides…You should be able to do what you want with your tweets….at any time.
Like many a “celebrity” has had to do, one must simply publish a retraction (as the original words/incidents are already out in the wild). They rarely have the change to get the original deleted. Perhaps it would be nice if one could flag that a message had been superseded (rather than deleting it) in one’s twitter stream.
That’s gay. I’m not going to publish a retraction like I’m some sort of important. Just delete and start over…Then forget about it.
I do wish the messed up tweet would delete immediately because a friend said my tweets didn’t delete for awhile after I knew I had deleted them.
Also ..I wish twitter had a ‘blackout’ button so I could black out each tweet I’ve read as I read them. Then If I get distracted or leave the computer or refresh the page…I could easily see where I was reading last…Like I would see chunks of blacked out areas that would let me know I had read in that spot already….Then I could easily glide past those spots.
Anyhow.. I put it in the twitter suggestion box…maybe one day….who knows…
That has always been a option i have wanted. Plurk has it, So does Friendfeed. But besided Twitter, Facebook , Myspace and Live Status don’t have it either. So a editing option may be problematic for scale reasons once you are over the 100 million users.
But once Twitter is up and running in their new datacenter, it is a feature i would like to have. But do agree it would be necessary for the edit option to be time limited. 3 minutes should be enough time to correct a link, a typo or a the wording of a statement. But beyond the problem of scare in Twitter by adding that option. Another problem would be the Twitter Search Index. As it would also be necessary to delay Twitter Search Query by 3 minutes or have a way spurge and replace the tweet once it is already indexed. I do wonder how does that work in Plurk. Will be checking how Plurk Search reacts to edits on those cases.
Fuck, this comment system would also benefit from editing while we are at it..
Editing a the Tweet text is technically feasible, but impractical. It would be a bit of work to implement everywhere, including the hundreds of thousands of Twitter clients that would have to update to support the new functionality. Given that there’s a reasonable workaround — deletion and re-creation, the near-term likelihood of implementation is practically zero.
Twitter’s power lies within its simplicity and its real-time nature. Adding an edit button would just make the whole experience more complicated, not to mention that real time interactions might lose all their meaning.
EVERYTHING is wrong with editing a tweet, from a technical and social perspective. Just delete and repost, or just post the corrected version leaving the original in-tact. I dont even feel like explaining how many things are wrong with an edit option.
Can you edit an sms you have sent? No. That’s the answer.
Article FAIL, just do what everyone does, either live with your initial error or delete it and recompose!
Its a max of 140 characters FFS, its not as though you have to re-type a lot :-/
No edit required, re-post. Who cares about mispelk!!
I believe you should be able to delete your post within a certain amount of time. For example, up to 2 minutes after you tweet. @jgwentworth
How about a simple 30-60 seconds “Edit” delay before a tweet is actually gets sent to Twitter ? That goes for Twitter apps/widgets developers.
Just my 2 cents and a provocation at the same time: is it really so hard not to screw up 140 characters? Admitting you don’t tweet drunk of course. Am I the only one thinking carefully before acting and always using a spell checker?