After nearly a decade-and-a-half since its debut, Twitter has hearkened to the pleas of its users and confirmed that it was working on the “edit” button.
“If you see an edited Tweet it’s because we’re testing the edit button, this is happening and you’ll be okay,” Twitter confirmed the arrival of the edit button in a tweet. Currently in its testing phase, the social media major announced that the edit button will initially be expanded to those who have a Twitter Blue subscription and limited to a “single country” at the beginning.
Twitter Blue is, of course, Twitter’s way to monetize its user base. For a fee of $4.99 per month, they will have exclusive access to several premium offerings. Now, these offerings include the edit button.
This feature has been a widely requested one – in fact, Jay Sullivan, Twitter’s VP of consumer product, confirmed earlier this year that it was “the most requested Twitter feature for many years.”
Of course, there are caveats to this feature. Twitter Blue subscribers who have access to the feature will be able to edit their tweets “a few times” for a period of 30 minutes after the post is published. After that, they can make no more edits, and the tweet will appear with an icon, timestamp, and label. If users click on the label, they will be able to view the edit history of the tweet.
The company informed in a blog post that the time period and history helped to protect “the integrity of the conversation and create a publicly accessible record of what was said.”
The edit button has been a much-anticipated feature for a good reason. Even the best of us make the most common of mistakes – typos, the e-version of spelling mistakes. How many times have we made such typos and grammar mistakes, how many times has Auto Correct become a nuisance instead of an aid, and how many times have posts containing grammar mistakes and typos been published on the internet with no option to edit them?
Ever since its inception, Twitter has stuck to its stubborn stance of not providing its users any options to edit their posts. With the growth and rising popularity of the micro-blogging, the clamours for an edit button rose as users demanded for the option to edit their posts once they had been published on Twitter for the world to see.
Elon Musk, who’s currently locked in a heated legal battle as he’s looking to inch his way out of the deal to acquire Twitter, joined the wagon and tweeted a poll, asking his users whether they wanted an edit button.
For fifteen years, the company turned a deaf ear to their pleas. That changes today.
“We’re hoping that, with the availability of Edit Tweet, Tweeting will feel more approachable and less stressful. You should be able to participate in the conversation in a way that makes sense to you, and we’ll keep working on ways that make it feel effortless to do just that,” the company said.
