Twitter Users Rejoice: An Edit Button Is Officially In The Works
Twitter is denying that Elon Musk, who is now the company's biggest shareholder, influenced their decision.
Twitter is finally working on the edit button that users had given up on requesting.
The social networking platform confirmed this morning that they’ve been working on the feature since 2021. “Now that everyone is asking,” the tweet began, “yes, we’ve been working on an edit feature since last year!” adding that they “didn’t get the idea from a poll”.
đź‘€ pic.twitter.com/I13wE3eLdn
— Twitter Comms (@TwitterComms) April 5, 2022
The poll comment is an obvious reference to billionaire space guy Elon Musk who conducted a Twitter poll about whether users want an edit button, after he bought an almost $3 billion (USD) stake in the company earlier this week, becoming its biggest shareholder.
And while the tweet read that Twitter “didn’t get the idea from a poll”, Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal wrote yesterday that users best take Musk’s poll very seriously, as “the consequence of this poll will be important”.
The consequences of this poll will be important. Please vote carefully. https://t.co/UDJIvznALB
— Parag Agrawal (@paraga) April 5, 2022
The Twitter CEO also revealed this morning that Musk would be joining Twitter’s board of directors. “Through conversations with Elon in recent weeks, it became clear to us that he would bring great value to our board,” he said.
He added that Musk is a “passionate believer and intense critic” of Twitter, which is “exactly what we need on [Twitter], and in the boardroom, to make us stronger in the long term”.
Twitter initially posted that they were working on an edit button on what was April Fool’s Day in the US, prompting many to believe that the company was messing with their users. An edit button became such a longed for feature that it the words “tweets, but editable” became a meme response to seeing a typo in a popular tweet.
Twitter’s former CEO Jack Dorsey was well-known for not being keen on an edit button in the past — in 2020 he said “we’ll probably never do it” — but it would appear that Agrawal, appointed as CEO in late 2021, is more amenable to the idea.
The company says they will be testing the new feature in the coming months.