Twitter finally bows to user demand, launches edit button for paid subscribers

Twitter finally bows to user demand, launches edit button for paid subscribers

The option to correct typos or problematic parts is available to users paying $5 a month for Twitter Blue, while the rest will have to delete the entire tweet and post a new one.

FPJ Web DeskUpdated: Monday, October 03, 2022, 05:50 PM IST
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Now Twitter's paid users can correct typos or act on second thoughts within 30 minutes. | Photo: Pixabay

It’s pretty common in times of cancel culture that someone’s problematic tweet from a decade back, could be dug out over disagreements that devolve into online mudslinging. Ever since Twitter has been in existence, users have been wondering why the microblogging site doesn’t allow people to edit their posts the way they can on Facebook. After years of user demand and discussions, Twitter has finally launched the edit button for a select number of users, so that people can correct typos or act on second thoughts within 30 minutes.

Been a long time coming

Twitter founder Jack Dorsey had once said that since the social media platform started as a network for sending texts which can’t be taken back, they wanted to stick to the format. In an interview in 2016, Dorsey even suggested a five to 30 second delay in sending a tweet, which could be used as a limited window to make changes. But he had also maintained that anything more than a few seconds to edit tweets, would hamper the real-time flow of conversations on the site.

Now that Dorsey is gone, his successor Parag Agrawal has turned the much anticipated feature into a reality, and even gives a good half hour to users for editing tweets. But this privilege will only be available for paid subscribers of Twitter Blue, while the rest will have to delete the entire tweet and rewrite it over a single typo or the wrong choice of words. Interestingly, the change comes months after Elon Musk demanded an edit button shortly before he made a bid to buy Twitter, which he eventually backtracked on using fake handles as an excuse.

What else do paid users get?

Twitter had increased the price of its Twitter Blue subscription from almost $3 a month to about $5 in July, just ahead of announcing the launch of the editing feature. In the second quarter of 2022, Twitter had made more than $100 million off Twitte Blue subscribers, but that was a 36 per cent drop in revenue from the same period of 2021. Before the edit button, Twitter Blue also offered an undo tweet option, which stores a tweet for a few second before publishing it, so that a user can delete it. There are also NFT profile pictures, a reader to compile threads into a readable article, and customised themes, available with the subscription.

A way around the paywall

For those who are still using the free version, a third party app called Brizzly allows an option to automatically delete and replace a tweet with a corrected version, which is as close to editing as you can get. It also lets users schedule tweets for 10 seconds or 10 minutes later, which becomes a time period when they can go back and make changes, before they go live.

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