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Twitter’s latest controversial — and yet very much desired — feature has been going through its early testing phase. We’re, of course, talking about the edit button. It’s odd that over so many years, Twitter still hadn’t implemented such an option, but it seems that the time has finally come for the edit button to make an appearance. Will that be followed by a permanent stay once the testing is over? Everything is pointing to “yes,” but it also seems that you might have to wait for quite a while before you can try it out for yourself.
Most other popular social media apps and websites have offered the option to edit your posts, for better or for worse. However, it seemed like on Twitter, this was always a bit problematic. Many users were decidedly against it, and that makes sense — the trolling potential is definitely there and seeing as Twitter is the prime location for arguing on the internet, editing your tweets can seem like a bit of a cop-out. However, Twitter seems to have found a way to remedy this to some extent.
When and if the edit button goes live fully, users (starting with the subscription-based Twitter Blue crowd) will get a 30-minute window to edit their tweet after they send it out into the void. Once that time is up, editing will, presumably, not be an option anymore. Moreover, everyone will have full insight into the edit history of a tweet, so trolling should hopefully be kept at a minimum… although, knowing Twitter, that might not be the case. For those less comedy-inclined, the edit button will be a great feature in the event of a typo.
The testing is going well, but access is limited
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If you’re wondering how the testing for the new feature is progressing, the news seems good — the Twitter Blue account has announced that the “test went well.” As a result, the social media platform will be rolling out the Edit Tweet functionality to more countries and expanding the range of the test. However, a massive chunk of Twitter Blue users will remain locked out from using Edit Tweet for now.
test went well, Edit Tweet is now rolling out to Twitter Blue members in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand!
US coming soon pic.twitter.com/7NNPRC0t1I
— Twitter Blue (@TwitterBlue) October 3, 2022
The testing will continue and now, Twitter Blue users in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand will be able to try it out. For the United States, Twitter only had a short message: “U.S. coming soon.” As for the rest of the world, we don’t know when that’s going to happen, but just expanding it to the U.S. will give the feature an enormous range. That’s exactly what Twitter needs in order to see how it is being used, or perhaps misused, and to try to remedy those issues (should they come up) before the global launch of the Edit Tweet feature.
Now, the real trial by fire is certainly going to happen when the beta test reaches non-Blue Twitter users sometime in the future. For now, with Elon Musk possibly once again choosing to buy Twitter after all, everything might change at a moment’s notice — although Musk was a fan of the edit feature, for the most part.
