Twitter is officially working on an edit button that will give users the ability to tweak tweets after they’ve been posted. It said Wednesday that the feature has been in development since last year — long before Elon Musk’s involvement.
Testing of the edit button will begin with Twitter Blue subscribers in the coming months before eventually rolling out to everyone.
Twitter is getting an edit button
Musk, who this week joined Twitter’s board after becoming the company’s largest shareholder, caused a stir when he asked his 80 million followers whether they think Twitter tweets should be editable after publishing.
Unsurprisingly, more than 73% of 4.4 million respondents voted for the feature in Musks’s poll. But according to Twitter’s communications team, an edit feature was already in the works — and has been since last year.
Testing will begin soon
“Yes, we’ve been working on an edit feature since last year,” Twitter said. “No, we didn’t get the idea from a poll.”
It’s not yet clear how the feature will work. But the social media giant confirmed that testing among Twitter Blue users (those who pay a $3 monthly fee to unlock additional Twitter features) will begin “in the coming months.”
The test will help Twitter “learn what works, what doesn’t, and what’s possible” before the edit function eventually rolls out to a wider audience.
More info on the way
It should also give users an idea of Twitter’s initial plans for tweet editing. At the moment, we don’t know how long users will have to edit a tweet after it’s posted, or whether it will be possible to see a version history.
— Twitter Comms (@TwitterComms) April 5, 2022
In a teaser GIF above, posted Wednesday, Twitter showed the “Edit Tweet” button for the first time, but the clip abruptly ends after the button is tapped.
