It has been an interesting week for Twitter and one Elon Musk. This as the the Tesla and SpaceX head purchased a sizeable amount of stock in the social media platform, which was followed by him tweeting out a poll on an edit button and only yesterday he was announced to be joining the board of directors at Twitter.
While we are still in the dark as to how much power Musk will have once he takes up his role at Twitter, it is clear that he is having an influence, even if the social media platform will not acknowledge it.
To that end, this morning Twitter has announced that an edit button will become a fully fledged feature on the platform.
The news was shared via the Twitter Comms account, with it also hinting in its tweet that the feature’s announcement has nothing to do with the aforementioned poll. It also notes that this feature has been in development for a year already.
As such, Twitter will have us believe that the flurry of announcements this week are all coincidence.
https://twitter.com/TwitterComms/status/1511456430024364037
The feature will be tested in Twitter Blue Labs first, which is an insider-esque version of the paid subscription version of the microblogging site that also adds a few exclusive features to the mix.
Whether an edit button too will be exclusive to Twitter Blue users remains to be seen, but given how this could be a sought after feature, it would make sense for Twitter to try to monetise it.
It is also unclear how Twitter will label edited tweets, especially as transparency on the platform is an important element, given public figures are often held to account for what they tweet out.
It is something that Twitter is cognisant of, with VP for Consumer Product, Jay Sullivan, intimating as much.
2/ Edit 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.
— Jay Sullivan (@jaysullivan) April 5, 2022
With an edit button now on the way, it will be interesting to see how well Twitter can police this highly requested feature in future.
[Image – CC 0 Pixabay]
