UPDATE 6/7: In a tweet early this morning, the Twitter Blue account announced that the window available for editing tweets has been extended from 30 minutes to one hour. The support page for Blue subscription features confirms the change. Of course, the ability to edit tweets continues to require an active Twitter Blue subscription.
UPDATE 10/6/22: The edit functionality is now rolling out for Twitter Blue members in the US after launching in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand earlier this week.
UPDATE: A Twitter spokesperson told PCMag the test with the edit button "will roll out to Twitter Blue subscribers in New Zealand, with Australia, Canada, and the US to follow."
Original story:
Twitter’s most-requested feature—the Edit button—is almost here. The company says it plans on rolling it out to some paid Twitter Blue subscribers later this month as part of an ongoing test.
The Edit button will first arrive for paid users in a “single country” in the coming weeks before Twitter begins expanding the test to more users. For now, it hasn’t said which country.
Although the Edit function will only be available for a select group of paid users, “everyone will still be able to see if a Tweet has been edited,” the company said in Thursday’s announcement.
During the test, you’ll be able to edit a tweet a “few times” within 30 minutes after the post is initially published. This means you won’t be able to edit old tweets that may have already gone viral and have been liked or retweeted by numerous users. “Think of it as a short period of time to do things like fix typos, add missed tags, and more,” the company added.
The company also posted a screenshot of what an edited tweet looks like. As you can see, the tweet will tell you the time when it was last edited, making it clear the original tweet was altered in some way. “Tapping the label will take viewers to the Tweet’s Edit History, which includes past versions of the Tweet,” Twitter said.
“For context, the time limit and version history play an important role here,” it said. “They help protect the integrity of the conversation and create a publicly accessible record of what was said.”
Twitter previously refrained from adding an Edit button over concerns users would abuse it to alter long-standing tweets that already went viral. “You might send a tweet and then someone might retweet that, and then an hour later you completely change the content of that tweet, and so that person who retweeted the original tweet is now retweeting and rebroadcasting something completely different,” former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey explained in 2020.
But in April, Twitter said it had been developing an Edit button since last year, citing it as the most-requested feature. However, the company wants to introduce the button carefully to ensure the Edit button doesn't disrupt the integrity of conversations on the social media platform. It also remains unclear if the Edit button will eventually become available to non-paying users.
Twitter Blue, which now costs $4.99 per month, doesn't currently feature an edit button, but the paid tier does offer an Undo button, which gives you 60 seconds to preview and make changes to a tweet before it gets published.