Why Twitter hasn't introduced a way to fix typos

Everyone has had a typo at least once, but if that happened on Twitter, you're out of luck when it comes to fixing it.

As much as celebrities like Kim Kardashian have campaigned to be able to edit tweets, it isn't an easy problem to solve, said its head of product, Kevin Weil, at the Code/Mobile conference in Half Moon Bay Wednesday.

"There are real challenges to editing tweets after you post them," Weil said.

It isn't a technical challenge, but a larger problem when it comes to how people use and embed tweets outside the platform.

For example, if someone retweets a tweet and then the original user edits it, there's debate over whether the change should be reflected in the retweet. It also becomes a problem for tweets that are embedded outside of the social network in news articles.

Editing a tweet doesn't mean just fixing typos, and it could change the meaning of the tweet entirely.

"These are real things that we think through in regards to that," Weil said.

That doesn't mean it's entirely off the table. Now that founder Jack Dorsey has taken over as CEO, the product teams are focusing on new features, including possibly ditching the 140 character limit that originally defined the product.

Twitter has already changed up some of its fundamentals, like showing its 'While you were away' feature at the top instead of the most recent tweet, so don't discount editing tweets quite yet.

"In my opinion, great product teams should always be challenging our own assumptions," Weil said.

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