After months of speculation, Twitter has finally added an edit button to their platform, allowing users to correct tweets up to 30 minutes after they’ve been published. This change was met with mixed reviews; some believed it would be beneficial, while others felt that it would undermine the purpose of Twitter and even degrade the quality of content shared on the platform. Regardless of what people think about this new update, it does bring about important questions about how this will change social media as we know it. Twitter Adds Edit Button: How This Will Change Social Media
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Who can edit their tweets
Only Twitter’s verified users (celebrities, politicians and brands) will have access to edit tweets. If a user you follow has posted something you want to remove from your timeline, they will be given a small window of time before you can see it. So next time someone from your favorite band accidentally tweets out their phone number, you’ll have time to report it before that number shows up in your feed.
How many times can you edit your tweet
Once. You can either delete your entire tweet and make a new one, or go in and edit one character at a time—anything more than that, and you’ll need to start over again. The feature is currently only available in a handful of countries (Canada, France, Japan, Germany, Spain, U.K., U.S.) and Twitter says it’s rolling out to everyone gradually over the coming days. If you don’t see an edit button yet, don’t worry: Just wait a bit longer. And while we know most people won’t be using it all that much anyway, I think there are plenty of reasons why every single user should try to take advantage of it once they do get access—not least because doing so will likely increase their engagement with their followers by a significant margin.
When will the feature come out
Twitter has not yet said exactly when it will release an edit button. In a statement announcing that it was working on one, a Twitter spokesperson told BuzzFeed News, Editing is something many of our users have been asking us for, and we’re working to make TweetDeck and Twitter more flexible in order to respond to user needs. When asked if there were any specific plans to roll out an edit feature across all platforms, they declined to comment. They did say they would share more information as soon as possible once they had concrete details.
Why was the feature created in the first place
The move is partly in response to high-profile errors, such as when a BBC editor tweeted about China’s Tiananmen Square crackdown during its 25th anniversary last year. The editor mistakenly thought he was using an internal preview function and accidentally sent it out to his more than 80,000 followers. The tweet was quickly deleted and replaced with a corrected message within minutes. It turns out that wasn’t an isolated incident; there have been other tweets like it over time.
Who Is The Feature Good For?
Twitter is adding a feature that’s been requested by users for years. Now, instead of making a mistake and deleting your tweet, you can edit it or delete it entirely within 30 minutes. The edit button doesn’t appear to be available yet – not in Twitter’s web client, nor on its mobile apps – but as VentureBeat notes, several publishers have already begun seeing an edit option pop up within their clients. So what does that mean for social media marketing?
How Does This Impact SEO?
Although it’s still early, it seems that Twitter is planning to add an edit button. There are two reasons why I believe it will impact SEO . The first is due to how search engines work. In order for a website or page of content to rank well in Google, it must be both relevant and up-to-date with current trends. With an edit feature, users can more easily make their content relevant by updating it as needed instead of creating a new tweet every time they want to update something. This will also help them keep their tweets shorter and more concise as they won’t have to retype everything each time they make a change.
Newer social media platforms also have this feature. Why?
The edit feature lets you correct a typo or fix an error before your post goes live, and it will reduce social media mistakes. With Twitter adding edit buttons to its interface, we can expect all major social media sites to follow suit. In fact, Facebook already has a similar edit button for posts on Pages—but not for personal profiles. For now, at least! Why?: It’s pretty clear that users want a way to change their posts after they go live, and now that Twitter has added that functionality, we’re likely to see other platforms adopt it as well. Where do you stand? Is there value in having edit capabilities? Why or why not? What problems could arise from allowing users to make changes after publishing?
