Twitter is finally giving its users what they have been begging for: an edit button. The company confirmed that the new feature will soon be accessible in a tweet today following internal testing.
According to a blog post, Twitter said that the plan is to make the feature available for only Twitter Blue subscribers in the coming weeks, giving them early access as part of their subscriber entitlement.
Twitter Blue is currently only available in Canada, the United States, New Zealand, and Australia. But, the editing feature will be tested in a single country to allow the team to observe the process and impact before expanding to other countries. And, everybody including non-blue subscribers can see when a tweet has been edited.
The rule for those using the Edit tweet feature is straightforward.
Tweets can only be edited a “few times” in the first 30 minutes after they are published. “Edited tweets” will be displayed as an icon label as well as the timestamp of their modification. Readers can also tap the label to view edited history and previous versions of the tweet.
This edit feature has been the subject of agitation by many users. And, in April, the social media platform announced that the development of an edit feature may be underway, in response to Elon Musk’s poll for an edit button feature. Following that, reverse engineers hinted at what the edit button feature would look, and there may be some similarities with the recent development of this feature.
The social media platform has also hinted that the Undo Tweet button, which is currently only available to Twitter Blue subscribers, will be made available to more users after the launch of the Edit Tweet Button.
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What users are saying
Despite the fact that many have been agitating for an edit feature for a long time, there have been some negative comments on the heels of the announcement. Popular among these is the possible impact of the edit button on the realness of Twitter.
Many people believe that it would distort the neutrality, rigidity and novelty of tweet contents on the platform, particularly for companies, politicians, and public figures who are mostly under duress to rescind previous statements.
The others are curious about the Application Programming Interface process, particularly because it allows third parties such as apps and researchers to download tweets in real time, which might be one of the reasons why the request was delayed.
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It’s been a long way coming
Since its launch, an edit button has topped the list of things users wanted on Twitter. Users have constantly worried about issues like typography errors and statements being taken out of context. and they want a way to write and correct errors or possible misunderstandings from their posts.
In February 2019, Twitter showed early signs that it could be on the verge of adding the much anticipated “Edit” button very soon. Then CEO, Jack Dorsey, in an interview hinted that the much-awaited feature could be in the works.
According to Jack, the edit button would only be available for a short time and it will be similar to how Whatsapp allows deleting messages sent in under an hour. But in Twitter’s case, the edit button would be available for just 30 seconds.
“Maybe we introduce a 5-30 seconds delay in the sending of the tweet and within that window, you can edit because the issue with going longer than that is it takes that real-time nature of the conversational flow out of it,” he said.
That was, however, not the first time. Twitter and its CEO had dropped similar hints in 2013, 2016 and 2018 that really got users excited about the feature. But it never debuted.
In a way, the introduction of an edit button will serve a good purpose. But, the execution has to be on point so it will more water down the genuineness of the platform. A simple mistake in the architecture of the edit button feature could break the platform. And, as Jack Dorsey said, the feature needs to be done right before it goes live.
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