think twice, write once
paraphrasing the old carpenter’s saw (get it? get it?), it is a good thing in the age of frictionless sharing and instant communication to think twice before unleashing your bon mots upon an unsuspecting world. it’s been possible for a while to censor your own posts and comments on facebook. with the latest update, users now have the option of editing comments instead of simply deleting them.
good news. you can now go back to less than perfect comments (and theoretically posts soon) and get all 20/20 hindsight on their behinds.
when edit means ‘delete’
facebook has allowed users to go back and remove or hide (in the new timeline) posts and comments for a while now. mouse over the top right cormer on a post of yours in your regular facebook stream and you will see an X pop, offering to delete the post. If you go to your own profile page, you see more options:
note that your edit options are limited – in this case, since the post came in through my rss reader, I am able to amend the source controls, but not the content itself. there are more options differ depending on the post. when you are tagged in someone’s picture, you first have the option of saying whether you want it to show up on your page at all (in your privacy settings). when it is there, your edit/delete options are a bit different:
check it out. you have the option to edit the date, add a location, and even reposition the picture. This does not affect the positioning on the poster’s page, but can make you look a little prettier on your own timeline (I tried, but there is simply no way to make myself look good here short of sliding myself out of the frame).
You can also untag yourself in the picture, which will also result in removing the image from your timeline.
when edit means edit
now, with your comments at least, you can do more. here is the initial post:
now a regrettable comment:
but I got the prized first comment spot! if I just delete, I’ll be buried somewhere down the list and it will no longer be about me, me, me. but look…
correct-o-mundo
and no one the wiser…but wait – what’s that “edited” thingie?
oh well – it’ll be like privacy settings and hardly anybody will see them.
and so that’s it. as I note above, it’s just comments that can be edited for now, but I expect soon we’ll see this for posts as well.
Related articles
Facebook Now Lets You Edit Comments(mashable.com)
New Facebook Feature Lets You Go Back In Time(huffingtonpost.com)
via btrandolph.com