During his wide-ranging interview with Joe Rogan this week, Jack Dorsey addressed the possibility of adding support for editing tweets. While Dorsey has
commented on the oft-requested feature in the past, his comments on Rogan show Twitter is still in the midst of figuring it out.
On the show, Rogan suggests that Twitter add support for an edit system where a user could edit their tweet, but the original version of that tweet would still be viewable. Dorsey’s response was that Twitter is looking into “exactly that.”
Based on the conversation, however, it seems additional details are still unclear. For instance, Dorsey suggests a 5-second to 30-second window for allowing tweet editing but doesn’t dive too far into specifics.
Here’s the full rundown of the conversation:
Rogan: The ability to edit, like if you make a typo or something like that. But also the ability for people to see the original.
Dorsey: We’re looking at exactly that. The reason we don’t have edit in the first place is we were built on SMS, we were built on text messaging. 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.
You could build it as such so maybe we introduce a 5-second to 30-second delay in the sending. 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.
Rogan: Isn’t clarity more important? You’re still going to have the ability to communicate quickly.
Dorsey: It depends on the context. If you’re in the context of an NBA game, you want to be fast and in the moment. You want to be raw. 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.
