Jack Dorsey says Twitter is “thinking a lot” about an edit-tweet button, also considering bookmarks, better threading, and multiple interest-based timelines
He also wants to know what else you want him to build. — You've probably dreamed of directing Twitter's product strategy — well, here's your chance!
Context & Ripple Effects
This is Jack Dorsey at his most exploratory: rather than announcing shipped features, he is polling users on whether Twitter should build an edit-tweet button alongside bookmarks, better threading, and multiple interest-based timelines. Nothing here is committed — the value of the moment is what it reveals about how Twitter's roadmap gets signaled.
The arc matters more than the tease. Three years later, Dorsey said in a Q&A that Twitter would "probably never" build an edit button, and by 2021 his energy had shifted to a decentralized protocol with an "app-store-like view of ranking algorithms" — suggesting the 2017 wishlist was less a roadmap than a window into which problems (control over the feed, reversibility of posts) kept recurring.
First-order effects
- Twitter users gain a direct channel into product prioritization, with Dorsey explicitly asking what else to build — but no named feature moves from consideration to commitment in this report.
Second-order effects
- Publicly floating an edit button sets an expectation the company later has to walk back, as Dorsey's own 2020 "probably never" reversal shows — repeated open-ended teases trade short-term goodwill for credibility risk on the roadmap.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, Twitter's answer to feed dissatisfaction is not one better timeline but user-selected ones — the interest-based timelines floated here are an early step toward the algorithm-choice model Dorsey articulated in 2021.
The trend: Social platform leadership is shifting from shipping fixed product decisions to signaling user-selectable mechanisms — editable content, chosen timelines, selectable ranking algorithms — with Twitter's edit-button flip-flop marking the gap between signal and delivery.