Biggest Tweet Fails – Why We NEED The New Edit Tweet Button

Tweet Fails

We’ve all seen them. The unlucky amongst us have experienced them.

From unfortunate typos to @ing the wrong person, so many users, even influential figures or corporations, have experienced awkward tweet errors since the platform’s creation in 2006.

It’s no surprise, therefore, that people have been requesting an ‘edit tweet’ button for some time. (To such an extent that it’s become a meme.) And it seems that this dream may soon become a reality…

https://x.com/Twitter/status/1509951255388504066

The company announced on 5th April that an edit tweet button is in the works. This would allow users to go in and amend tweets after they have been posted.

Interestingly, this comes shortly after Tesla founder, and new Twitter board member, Elon Musk, asked his followers in a Twitter poll whether they wanted to see this feature on the platform.

Do you want an edit button?

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 5, 2022

A staggering 4.4 million people voted, with over 73% voting in favour of an edit button.

The new feature will be trialled on Twitter’s subscription platform ‘Twitter Blue’ before, if all goes well, being rolled out across the platform, worldwide.

In celebration of the edit button coming to fruition, here are some examples of tweet mishaps that prove exactly why it is that this feature was so high in demand…

‘Covfefe’

Our first Twitter mishap comes from none other than Donald Trump. Somewhat of an expert on the subject of bad tweets, America’s 45th president experienced MANY Twitter fails in his 4-year run.

Just after midnight on 31st May 2017, Trump took to Twitter to share the following bizarre message, “Despite the constant negative press covfefe.”

It’s thought that this was a rather clumsy (perhaps sleepy) attempt at typing ‘press coverage.’

The post, since deleted, stayed up for a full 6 hours. In this time, it caused quite the confusion. The responses that ensued were hilarious…

https://x.com/Travon/status/869772847174082560

It’s been five minutes. What if this is it. That is his final tweet & the rest of history stops.

— Emily Nussbaum (@emilynussbaum) May 31, 2017

The tweet was finally removed at 5:48am, and replaced with the following, ‘”Who can figure out the true meaning of ‘covfefe’ ??? Enjoy!” Trump tweeted.

‘#susanalbumparty’

Oh poor, poor Susan Boyle.

The XFactor winner’s team were probably left wishing they’d taken a closer look at their promotional hashtag ‘#susanalbumparty’ after many users gave the innocent tweet a filthy twist.

https://x.com/_FishArmy/status/844899695910686720

If an edit tweet button had existed at the time, I’m certain that her social media manager would have gone in and tweaked the hashtag so as to avoid further embarrassment!

If anything, it reminded us all of the importance of capital letters.

Rita Ora wants 100k retweets

Singer-songwriter Rita Ora perhaps overestimated her engagement rate after tweeting, ‘Dropping my new song Monday if this get 100,000 retweets.’

The tweet was shortly deleted, after receiving less than 2000 retweets – a far cry from her original asking! After erasing the tweet, Ora claimed that her Twitter account had been hacked, and that she would only release music ‘when she was ready.’

Perhaps if the edit button had existed back in 2014, she could have gone in and sneakily lowered her target!

Mary J Blige’s ‘intelligents’

Mary J Blige herself suffered from quite an ironic Tweet fail, as she attempted to ‘clap back’ at those who underestimated her.

Ah – there’s nothing quite like misspelling intelligence whilst trying to prove your intelligence. A quick tweet edit could have sorted this one. (Or maybe a more thorough proofread!)

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