Skip to content
How often have you cringed when you made an error while posting a tweet? Typos in tweets may soon be a thing of the past as Twitter, the microblogging site, has launched the sought-after ‘Edit tweet’ option — allowing users to make changes to their tweets after posting them.
On Thursday, the California-based giant announced introducing the ‘Edit Tweet’ option, adding that it was testing the feature and tweets would be available to edit a few times in the 30 minutes after posting.
Before you celebrate the news, the ‘Edit Tweet’ is not available to all now; only a select few users have access to it.
But how does it work? Who will be able to use it? Here’s everything we know so far about the newly introduced feature.
What is the ‘Edit Tweet’ feature?
As the name suggests, Edit Tweet is a feature that allows people to change their tweet after it has been published.
The move comes after Jay Sullivan, Twitter’s head of consumer product, had said in April that the company had been working on such a feature since 2021.
The company said in the blog post that the ‘Edit Tweet’ feature is to “give people a short period to fix things like typos, add missed tags, and more.” However, there’s no restriction to what you can modify in a tweet and what consequences those edits might have.
“With Edit Tweet, we’re hoping to make tweeting easier and more approachable, giving people more choice and control in how they express themselves and how they contribute to the many conversations happening on Twitter,” the company said in a blog post.
The company has had a long, complicated history of allowing users to edit their tweets. In 2016, founder and ex-CEO Jack Dorsey had said that an opportunity to edit tweets was “def needed.”
Then in 2019, he said that Twitter was considering a tool that could “clarify” tweets, not edit them. And in early 2020, Dorsey said ‘no’ when asked if the company was rolling out an edit button.
How will it work?
As of now, those who are given access to the feature will be able to make changes to their tweet within a 30-minute window a couple of times.
The edited tweet will appear with an icon, timestamp, and label, so it is clear that the original tweet has been modified. If people tap the title, they can see the tweet’s history, which includes its past versions.
The company has clearly stated that users won’t be able to change their old posts. You can only edit a tweet up to 30 minutes after it is posted.
So, all of us can edit our tweets?
Currently, the option hasn’t been rolled out to all. The feature will be first rolled out to Twitter Blue users.
Currently, Twitter Blue costs $4.99 (Rs 397) per month and is available only in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United States. This means users in India will have to wait.
The microblogging website added that it’s introducing this feature to the smaller group of paid users to gather more feedback, including how people could misuse it — so that it can tune the edit button’s functionality accordingly.
“Since this is our most requested feature to date, we want to ensure we get it right, as per a TechCrunch report.
How have users reacted?
While some are anxiously waiting for the new feature to roll out to the masses, some are concerned and maintain that it might be contrary to the spirit of the platform.
Another user questioned why the company was bowing down to public pressure.
As per experts, some issues need to be weeded out before the roll-out of an edit button. As tweets are now seen as a source of news stories, making them editable might pressure the publisher to check whether any changes have been made.
