Photo: Marten Bjork
By: Nick Gambino
Out of all the popular social media apps that exist, Twitter is the only one that has never added an edit button. It’s like they’ve just flat-out refused no matter how much public demand cried for it. Whatever you send out – typos, warts and all – is going to be there until you delete the whole tweet.
Twitter has teased the idea of adding this edit feature but hasn’t ever pulled the trigger, even though it seems an easy enough add.
“This is an edited Tweet,” a tweet from an official Twitter account read on the 1st of September, giving us our first hope. “We’re testing it.”
Now, they’ve officially announced that they’re rolling it out but only for Twitter Blue subscribers. That’s the paid subscription that allows you access to more features like 60 seconds to undo your tweet, reader mode, folder bookmarking and, now, an edit button.
As a follow-up tweet on the 3rd of October Twitter said, “Test went well, Edit Tweet is now rolling out to Twitter Blue members in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. US coming soon.”
This new edit button is better than nothing, but it’s still a far cry from the editing capabilities present on Facebook and Instagram. Users can edit their tweets up to 30 minutes after they post them. And, as long as they are within that 30-minute window, they can edit the post up to five times. According to a Twitter help page, this only applies to tweets and quote tweets, not threads, replies, etc. So it’s not unlimited, but it’s at least something where there was nothing before.
You’ll be able to see when a tweet has been modified from its original posting as it’ll have “last edited” with a timestamp under it. If you want more info on what was edited, click on the little pencil icon below the tweet. This is where you’ll see a version history for the tweet. This is all in the name of transparency and making you look like an idiot when you misspelled “pneumonia.”
On the plus side, Twitter says you won’t lose any engagement from earlier versions of your tweet after you edit them.
Hopefully this rolls out to the U.S. and then all Twitter users soon.
