Elon Musk asks if Twitter wants edit button: 14 features we wished Twitter and Instagram had
I’m sure most of us love one particular social media app and also hate it. Hate it because as loyal users, it lacks some features that we all desire; but the company just won’t listen to our account with some double-digit following.
But what if you are the world’s richest man, a billionaire, with millions of followers? Elon Musk is that social media addict with the resources and influence.
It was only on March 27, 2022, that Elon Musk floated the idea of opening his own social media app. He accused Twitter’s algorithm of muzzling free speech; and of course, he started the debate on Twitter.
Given that Twitter serves as the de facto public town square, failing to adhere to free speech principles fundamentally undermines democracy. What should be done? https://t.co/aPS9ycji37
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 26, 2022
However, soon after, it was revealed that Elon Musk in fact has bought a 9.2% stake in Twitter. Musk owns 73,486,938 shares in the micro-blogging site as of March 14, 2022, which is worth $2.89 billion. This actually makes Musk the largest shareholder at the company, four times that of Twitter founder Jack Dorsey.
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Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal on April 5, 2022, announced in a tweet that the SpaceX and Tesla CEO has been appointed to the social media platform's board. Musk also replied to Agrawal saying that he's excited to work with the team.
He’s both a passionate believer and intense critic of the service which is exactly what we need on @Twitter, and in the boardroom, to make us stronger in the long-term. Welcome Elon!
— Parag Agrawal (@paraga) April 5, 2022
Looking forward to working with Parag & Twitter board to make significant improvements to Twitter in coming months!
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 5, 2022
This came after Elon Musk posted a Twitter poll question on the age-old debate about the micro-blogging site – “Do you want an edit button? – Yse/on.”
It seems like ‘yes’ and ‘no’ options were intentionally misspelled.
Do you want an edit button?
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 5, 2022
There has always been a debate on Twitter about Twitter lacking an edit button, which has irked users who made typos, pasted the wrong link or picture, tagged the wrong person or just made a factual blunder. From Kim Kardashian to the newbie on Twitter, everyone has lobbied behind an edit button. But Twitter’s former CEO and founder Jack Dorsey had once said that they would probably never do it. Things at Twitter have drastically changed since then – one, Dorsey is no longer the CEO at Twitter (Parag Agrawal is) and two, Musk is now on the board of the company.
Parag Agrawal had also asked users to vote carefully on Elon Musk's Twitter poll question. We don’t know if Musk and Agrawal are pulling an elaborated and belated April Fool’s Day prank, but Parag's response is the same that Musk used a while ago during the freedom of speech Twitter poll.
The consequences of this poll will be important. Please vote carefully. https://t.co/UDJIvznALB
— Parag Agrawal (@paraga) April 5, 2022
The consequences of this poll will be important. Please vote carefully.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 25, 2022
But do you want an edit button? Twitter user Pranay Pothole who often interacts with Musk on Twitter suggested this – and this author thinks perhaps it is the better idea than a mere ‘yes’ or ‘no’.
A temporary edit button where there's a time limit, let's say you can edit your Tweets for only 5 minutes after you've Tweeted something then after 5 minutes that edit button is disabled. By having this functionality typos will also be fixed & news can't be altered.
— Pranay Pathole (@PPathole) April 5, 2022
Some users pointed out the problem with having an edit button and we couldn’t agree more.
Here's my argument against an edit button: What if a tweet goes viral, lots of retweets & millions of impressions, & then the author completely changes the meaning? Not just a grammatical fix, but a TOTAL ideological change? Or shameless self-promote?
— Liz Wheeler (@Liz_Wheeler) April 5, 2022
But setting aside the debate on a Twitter edit button, here are some other features that users wished they had on Twitter and Instagram...
Starting with the topic at hand – Twitter - we wish these features could also be incorporated:
1. Search on Twitter Profile: Who else feels like finding a needle in a haystack when searching for a particular tweet from a particular person from 5 years ago or just searching for that tweet you liked ages ago? We wish that there was a feature that allows searching for tweets on individual Twitter accounts and profiles, rather than relying on Google for it.
2. Video or photo albums: Currently, profiles have only the ‘media’ classification to see all tweets with photo, video or link embeds. We wish that profiles had a separate category to view all video and photo albums separately, like a plain old photo gallery interface.
3. Import contacts from Facebook and Instagram: This request is perhaps not everyone’s dream. There are some people who would like to keep their Facebook, Instagram and Twitter personas different from each other, but others would like the option of seeing which of their Facebook, Instagram and perhaps WhatsApp contacts also have a Twitter profile.
4. Tweeting to a certain group of people: Currently, Twitter allows tweets to be only seen by followers in a private or protected account; but we wish they also allowed grouping of followers and some tweets only seen by selected groups. Twitter is testing something called Twitter Communities, where people with similar interests can tweet in the community about the subject without the tweets being seen by others. But this feature has not been rolled out everywhere.
imagine an alternate timeline where everyone just gets yousay hi to Communities—the place to connect with people who Tweet like you. testing now on iOS and web, Android soon! pic.twitter.com/TJdKwUa4D2
— Twitter Communities (@HiCommunities) September 8, 2021
5. Instagram Activity: Once upon a time there was a feature on Instagram where users could see what people they follow are doing – who are they following, where did they comment, what did they like and more. But now, the feature doesn’t exist and many wish it came back! Who doesn’t love to know what their followers (or the ones they follow) are doing?
6. Posts you liked: This feature also existed on Instagram where you could see all the liked posts in one place. But for some reason, it doesn’t exist anymore and we want it back.
7. Hashtags: For Instagram, we believe there should be a different place other than the caption box to add hashtags. If there are too many, it seems like the user is desperate for attention. A separate section to hide the hashtags would be very useful.
Instagram is testing the ability to add hashtags to posts without including it in the post caption pic.twitter.com/OhQn0xcCuw
— Jane Manchun Wong (@wongmjane) September 20, 2018
8. URLs: Every Instagram user is perhaps crying for this at every moment they use the platform. Instagrammers really really want clickable URLs that can be added in posts. I mean why do they not exist? It doesn’t make sense. We can’t always be travelling back to the profile and clicking on the bio link forever.
9. Reposting: You can re-share Instagram stories, but not posts and we wish it existed as there are so many things that users would want to re-share as posts.
10. Search option on profile: We mentioned this for Twitter profiles and we also wish it existed for Instagram that can make finding posts easier.
Other than this wish list, there are a few common features we wished existed on Twitter and Instagram:
11. Mass scheduling that lets users schedule a single post multiple times. Instagram doesn’t have a direct schedule option; users have to navigate through Facebook schedule to schedule posts on Instagram. A direct method would be great too.
12. Mass delete option that would allow users to delete multiple tweets and Insta posts at a time rather than one by one.
13. Find out who visited the profile: It’s a fantasy we wish for Twitter and Instagram! It would certainly make the job of social media detectives a bit harder.
14. Who unfollowed whom: There are third party apps that allow users to see this on Twitter and Instagram, but it could be inbuilt, making the platforms more transparent.
What features do you wish Twitter and Instagram had?