Twitter is finally working on the much-demanded 'edit button' feature

Twitter, on Tuesday, tweeted that it is working on a way for users to edit their 280-character messages.

Twitter said it will test the feature in its paid service, Twitter Blue, in the coming months.

Twitter has confirmed it has been exploring how to include an 'Edit' feature since last year and said that the project has nothing to do with the fact that edit-function fan Elon Musk was just revealed as the company's largest shareholder and now sits on its board.

The micro-blogging site plans to begin testing this in the coming months.

Incidentally, Twitter's team had posted about an 'edit' button on April 1 as well, but everyone thought it was an April Fool's Day joke.

According to Jay Sullivan, Head of Product at Twitter, the company has been exploring how to build the "Edit feature in a safe manner" and will begin to test this out within Twitter Blue Labs in the coming months.

Sullivan wrote in a Twitter thread that the 'Edit' button remains the most requested as users want to "fix (sometimes embarrassing) mistakes, typos and hot takes". However, he added that "without things like time limits, controls, and transparency about what has been edited, Edit could be misused to alter the record of the public conversation."

He added that Twitter knows it will need to protect the integrity of that public conversation when including an Edit button. "Therefore, it will take time and we will be actively seeking input and adversarial thinking in advance of launching Edit. We will approach this feature with care and thoughtfulness and we will share updates as we go," he wrote.

Twitter's 'Edit' button remains a long drawn demand. But one reason it has not had this feature was former CEO and co-founder Jack Dorsey, who quit last year.

Dorsey had told back in 2020 that "we will probably never do it" when asked about adding an edit option. According to Dorsey, the idea goes back to Twitter's original design. "We started as an SMS, text message service. And as you all know, when you send a text, you can't really take it back," Dorsey had said. "We wanted to preserve that vibe, that feeling, in the early days," he adds.