- Twitter is bringing a new Edit button that allows users to edit tweets for 30 minutes after posting.
- The feature will only be available for paying customers of Twitter Blue initially.
- This launch is in line with the company’s new vision of handing more power to its developers.
Seems like social media giant Twitter hit the news again, thankfully this time, it’s for the right reasons.
Amidst an ongoing feud with “almost” boss Elon Musk who backed out of the sensational $44 billion deal to buy out the firm in July this year, the development team, however, has been making steady progress towards a new launch.
Be gone typos
For ages, the most common request directed towards Twitter has been for the existence of the all-powerful “Edit” button.
Finally, the users’ wishes have come true, as the social media platform has announced to roll out the feature on 1st September.
Under this new feature, available only for Twitter Blue account holders initially, a user will have 30 minutes to edit his original tweet. So say goodbye to all those unwanted typos!
The Edit button also protects against any biases towards transparency by adding an edit history for every tweet and a big notice saying a tweet has been edited. Also, users will only be allowed to edit tweets a certain number of times.
Rebirth of the Tweet and its implications
The Edit button as well as the goal it wishes to achieve are both under debate. It brings out the question of introducing a greater power to wreak havoc.
What happens when a user modifies the content of a viral tweet to a hateful message which can be seen by all? Or what happens when the new feature is exploited to spread fake messages to aid modern cryptocurrency scams?
The real question is will Twitter be able to track the users genuinely using the Edit button to correct typos and safeguard them too?
The edit button however amounts to a fundamental change to the core unit of Twitter: the tweet. If a single tweet can be made to mean different things in different places, Twitter suddenly starts to feel like an unreliable narrator.
But why now?
Project Bluesky was created within Twitter to build a standard for social media on the platform. Under this initiative, the firm has been giving its developers the power to “drive the future of innovation on Twitter,” as well as rethink everything from how the community operates to how the algorithms work.
Hence we have been witnessing a growth spurt in new services offered on Twitter after an almost stagnant phase in the last decade.
Some examples include “Spaces” which includes podcasts. There were newsletters, Super Follows, Twitter Shops, and now there’s Circle, Twitter’s feature for sharing content with only one’s closest friends and followers.
Now with the presidential election coming up in the US, Twitter’s reach is likely to spike again over the next couple of years. Hence it needs to come back with a bang. All the while, introduced new features to navigate more customers towards its $5 Twitter Blue Program.
Does a new launch spell sure success?
For ages, Twitter has been labeled as a “traditional” social media platform. In other words, its framework has been non-evolutionary for almost a decade.
While almost all applications under the Meta umbrella introduced new or rather expanded to include popular utilities such as “reels” to keep the users interested, Twitter remained landlocked in its 280-character window.
Now there are two sides to this coin. Twitter has not only been very slow with new product launches but also its relationship with third-party apps is “questionable”.
For any new feature to stick, a parent company needs to be a better partner to third-party apps. However, Twitter’s behavior over the years is likely that such apps won’t immediately jump on board with new ideas.
Moreover, most of the things that Twitter has been building aren’t even available in Tweetdeck, the power-user app it owns.
So with all this said and done, will the Twitter “Edit button” be successful? Let’s wait and watch.
