Twitter Launches New Feature, Still Won’t Give Us Edit Button

Ah, the evolution of social media. Remember outfitting your MySpace page with cool backgrounds and personalized playlists. Didn't we feel so cool as we hit copy and paste on the embed codes? We've come so far! Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram have been the mainstays of the last decade. Of the three, Twitter has stayed the most true to its original concept.

Instagram and Facebook have gone through several changes, but the most notable was the addition of Stories, where you can post videos and pictures that disappear in 24 hours. Instagram launched theirs in August of 2016, while its sister company followed suit less than a year later by adding the same feature.

As for Twitter, most users have simply asked for an edit button. Instead the platform doubled its allowed character count from 140 to 280 in 2017. And other than small tweaks here and there, there have been no drastic changes to report. Until now.

An edit button, perhaps? Nope. Twitter has joined the party three years late with the launch of Fleets, which is just the Stories feature for twitter. Did anyone even want this? Apparently the concept has been tested in Brazil, Italy, India, and South Korea. Design Director Joshua Harris and Product Manager Sam Haveson released a statement sharing their findings:

We learned Fleets helped people feel more comfortable joining the conversation – we saw people with Fleets talk more on Twitter. Those new to Twitter found Fleets to be an easier way to share what's on their mind. Because they disappear from view after a day, Fleets helped people feel more comfortable sharing personal and casual thoughts, opinions, and feelings. These are early findings from our tests and we’re excited to learn more about how Fleets are used by you.

All the details of the new Fleet feature can be found on Twitter's blog. The TL;DR version is that it works basically the way Instagram Stories does. Not sure yet if I'll utilize it, but I do know I'm still upset we've been denied an edit button for a decade. Maybe next year.