“We’re hoping that with the availability of Edit Tweet, tweeting will feel more approachable and less stressful,” Twitter said in a statement.
ADVERTISEMENTPermanently misspelt tweets and typos might soon be a thing of the past.
Twitter said on Thursday it is working on allowing users to edit their tweets, which it said is one of the most requested features to date.
The social media company said in a blog post that it's testing the “Edit Tweet” feature internally with plans to roll it out later this month to subscribers of its premium Twitter Blue service.
Since Twitter launched in 2006, the social media giant has been against an editing button, arguing in favour of the honesty of an unedited tweet despite users' requests.
An edit button was one of the features billionaire Elon Musk - who's now trying to pull out of a €44 billion takeover of Twitter - appeared to champion in April when he became a shareholder of the social platform.
Musk had conducted a poll on Twitter that received over 4.4 million votes and showed nearly three-quarters of respondents wanted an edit button.
'Less stressful' tweeting
“We’re hoping that with the availability of Edit Tweet, tweeting will feel more approachable and less stressful,” Twitter said in a statement.
“You should be able to participate in the conversation in a way that makes sense to you”.
But there are certain constraints with the edit button to prevent disinformation spreaders from misusing it.
The edit function will give users 30 minutes to make changes such as fixing typos or adding hashtags after first publishing a tweet.
To make it clear that a tweet has been modified, it will be labelled and appear with an icon and timestamp. Users can look up past versions of the tweet by tapping the label.
Twitter said it's testing the edit feature with a small group of users so it can identify and resolve potential issues.
“This includes how people might misuse the feature,” the company said in a blog post. “You can never be too careful”.
Twitter said the time limit and version history play an important role.
“They help protect the integrity of the conversation and create a publicly accessible record of what was said”.
