No more typos or feeling dumb for publishing a tweet too fast without double-checking it, as Twitter finally adds the highly-requested Edit Tweet feature. Having announced the news on September 1st, 2022, Twitter made it clear that the feature is currently only available for internal testing. However, Twitter Blue subscribers in specific regions will have the first opportunity to test it publicly.
So say goodbye to faulty errors or any mistakes that could’ve been easily fixed with a minor tweak as Twitter finally starts to listen to its users’ demands.
How will the Edit Tweet feature work?
In a statement, Twitter reminded users that the initial release of the feature would only be a “soft launch” as the tech giant intends to fully monitor user behavior before finalizing the feature for the full public rollout.
According to an insider scoop from Casey Newton, founder, and editor of Platformer, a publication about the intersection of tech of democracy, and longtime Silicon Valley editor of The Verge, the Edit Tweet feature will be publicly available for testing in New Zealand from the 21st September 2022 only for Twitter Blue subscribers.
Although it’s about time Twitter enables a feature for their users to better curate their statements, especially in an era where every statement is critically analyzed to fit the criteria of political correctness to perfection, it does come with some snags making it a bit different from Instagram’s edit caption option.
First and foremost, edits to tweets can only be made within 30 minutes from the time of posting. Secondly, tweets can only be edited to a maximum of 5 times in that 30-minute window. So not exactly complete editing freedom, but the idea is to provide enough time to fix typos, add missing media files, and include hashtags that might have been missed to increase the statement’s reach.
Twitter emphasized that the feature is still in the testing phase and that the limits on time and number of edits could be adjusted based on user behavior and feedback from the regions being experimented on. But just because you can edit a Tweet, doesn’t mean the original version is gone forever.
Edited Tweets will include a timestamp, icon, and a label indicating that you are not seeing the original version. Tapping the label will bring up the new Edit History, which will show all past versions of the Tweet. Whether other users will also be allowed to see all the previous versions of the tweet is still unclear, but let’s hope this is not the case as some mistakes or rash statements are meant to be left unseen…
“The time limit and version history play an important role here. They help protect the integrity of the conversation and create a publicly accessible record of what was said.”
Official announcement as stated by Twitter
Why did it take so long to incorporate the Edit Tweet feature?
Twitter, unlike Instagram or any other content creation platform, is based on the principle of exchanging and engaging in conversations, specifically in the form of reactions to statements and released knowledge or opinions. Knowing that this was a highly demanded feature even from professional Twitter users, their commitment to transparency seems to stem from fears that some users would abuse the feature for spreading misinformation, scams, and other malicious content.
Not even to mention discredit the company’s main brand value of having unfiltered authentic conversations.
This leads to the question: when the Edit Tweet feature is available for everyone, who will want to keep paying for Twitter Blue? Only time will tell as we wait and see the public’s reaction toward the newly added feature.
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