Image: Andrew Matthews/PA
A senior executive said that adding an edit button is not high on the priority list at Twitter.
Hopes of an edit button flying onto Twitter any time soon are fading after a senior executive indicated that it is not a primary concern for the social network at present.
One of the main reasons users have called for an edit feature is to correct mistakes – at the moment, errors in tweets either have to be left on the site, or the entire post has to be deleted and then posted again.
An edit feature has been long requested by users looking for an easier way to amend errors in their tweets, but Twitter’s Kayvon Beykpour has suggested that they could be waiting a while longer.
“Honestly, it’s a feature that I think we should build at some point, but it’s not anywhere near the top of our priorities,” the company’s product lead and co-founder of its Periscope live-streaming technology said at a press event in San Francisco, according to TechCrunch. “That’s the honest answer.”
Beykpour didn’t necessarily rule out the possibility that the feature would be added at a later point and accepted that users will eventually need to have a way to correct typos.
The social network’s boss Jack Dorsey previously explained that one of the concerns with an edit button is how it could be used to distort the original tweet’s meaning, which would be especially tricky when factoring in retweets.
He explained at an event in India that while the company had certainly been “considering” the prospect of an edit button for a while, he wanted to ensure it was implemented “in the right way”.
“We can’t just rush it out,” Dorsey said. “You have to pay attention to what are the use cases for the edit button.”
“Ultimately, we need to make sure we’re solving a real problem and solving a use case that people are seeing as friction within the service, and making that easy for people to do.”
— PA Media, with additional reporting by Eva Short
