Twitter on Wednesday announced that it is working to allow users to edit their tweets after posting them to fix typos and errors, as its CEO Parag Agrawal welcomed Tesla and SpaceX CEO to its board of directors.
The micro-blogging platform said Twitter plans to begin testing the feature with Twitter Blue subscribers in "the coming months."
"Now that everyone is asking... yes, we've been working on an edit feature since last year!," said the company.
"We didn't get the idea from a poll (by Elon Musk). We're kicking off testing within @TwitterBlue. Labs in the coming months to learn what works, what doesn't, and what's possible," Twitter posted.
The news comes as Musk acquired 9.2 per cent stake for $3 billion in the company.
Jay Sullivan, the company's VP of consumer product, said that the edit button has been the most requested Twitter feature for many years.
"People want to be able to fix (sometimes embarrassing) mistakes, typos and hot takes in the moment. They currently work around this by deleting and tweeting again," Sullivan said on Wednesday.
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," he commented.
"Protecting the integrity of that public conversation is our top priority when we approach this work".
Therefore, it will take time and "we will be actively seeking input and adversarial thinking in advance of launching Edit. We will approach this feature with care and thoughtfulness and we will share updates as we go," he said in a tweet thread.
Twitter's former CEO, Jack Dorsey was always reluctant to add the edit button in the past.
Musk, which started a poll this week asking his over 80 million followers if they want an edit button, has announced to make significant improvements to Twitter in the coming months.
Twitter users make suggestions
I don't think it needs to be (or should be) a permanent option, give it a 30s time window to enable people to fix errors etc. & prevent the opportunity to change the meaning of a tweet once people start reacting to it. https://t.co/HlwEzkouOR
— SportyMiner ⛏️ (@Sporty_Miner) April 6, 2022
The edit button should have a 2-3 minute limit, otherwise people who retweet could get in trouble down the line for retweeting stuff that somebody changedhttps://t.co/MoA585oX5K
— XLProfessor (@XLProfessor) April 6, 2022
If not an Edit button, how about a “Quick/EasyRe-do” button/link:
— Ken Spreitzer (@KenSpreitzer) April 5, 2022
1. User taps (on last tweet)
2. New tweet is created with same content (text, reply to ID, files, etc)
3. The user can edit
4. User taps “Replace” button to commit
5. Existing tweet is deleted and new one is used
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