Twitter has finally confirmed that it’s working on an Edit feature, which has been a top-requested feature for many years. The company said yesterday that the Edit feature has been in development since last year and that it will start being tested as a “Labs” feature for Twitter Blue subscribers.
Last week, Twitter actually announced the upcoming Edit feature on April Fools’ day, which was pretty much the worst moment to announce such a feature. A lot has happened since then with Elon Musk becoming the biggest Twitter shareholder and getting a seat on the company’s board of directors.
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The same Musk also did a poll on Twitter yesterday to ask his followers if they wanted an Edit button, and the result was a 73.6% amount of yes for 4,4 million votes. Twitter joked in its announcement for the Edit feature that “we didn’t get the idea from a poll.”
now that everyone is asking…
yes, we’ve been working on an edit feature since last year!
no, we didn’t get the idea from a poll 😉
we're kicking off testing within @TwitterBlue Labs in the coming months to learn what works, what doesn’t, and what’s possible.
— Twitter Comms (@TwitterComms) April 5, 2022
Jay Sullivan, Head of Consumer Product at Twitter explained that the company will “approach this feature with care and thoughtfulness” so that its users can’t abuse it for misinformation purposes. “Without things like time limits, controls, and transparency about what has been edited, Edit could be misused to alter the record of the public conversation. Protecting the integrity of that public conversation is our top priority when we approach this work,” the exec said.
Sullivan did also confirm was the ability to edit tweets has been “the most requested Twitter feature for many years,” and hinted that other changes are in the pipeline for the social network. “This is just one feature we are exploring as we work to give people more choice and control over their Twitter experience, foster a healthy conversation, and help people be more comfortable on Twitter,” the exec tweeted yesterday.