Twitter Expands Tweet Edit Window For Blue Subscribers
It's been difficult keeping track of things that have happened since Twitter rolled back its legacy verification system earlier this year, and introduced its open-to-all Twitter Blue subscription. Twitter's much-maligned subscription service rolled out to users back in March 2023 with a promise of handing over the once-coveted Blue checkmark to anyone willing to pay.
To make the deal sweeter, the Elon Musk-owned company bundled a bunch of features that would only be accessible to Twitter Blue users. Among the newer feature additions to Twitter Blue users was the ability to edit tweets. The feature came with a caveat, though, and gave users just 30 minutes to make the edits before they were permanently locked from editing. Twitter has just confirmed that it is making a slight adjustment to that time window.
Starting today, June 8, 2022, Twitter Blue subscribers will get up to an hour to edit their tweets, compared to the earlier 30-minute time window. The development was confirmed by the official Twitter Blue handle.
Blue subscribers now have up to 1 hour to edit their Tweets.
— Twitter Blue (@TwitterBlue) June 7, 2023
Given the haphazard manner in which several new features were rolled out to Twitter users since the Musk takeover, it is unclear if the expanded tweet edit timeframe was implemented post-user feedback. Nevertheless, if you are among the 400,000-odd Twitter Blue subscribers (as of March 2023), you now have 30 more minutes to make final changes to your tweet before they are set in stone. Note that users are still limited to editing tweets a total of five times within this hour-long window.
Thirty more minutes to edit tweets
While the ability to edit tweets was a long-requested feature, Twitter (under its previous management) was not entirely sure how to implement the feature, and sat on it for years. Things changed after Musk took over the company late last year. In fact, even before the takeover happened, Musk conducted a poll asking his followers if they would like the option to edit tweets. An overwhelming majority voted in favor of the edit button.
Following the official takeover, Musk asked software engineers at Twitter to work on the feature. However, when the editable tweets feature officially launched earlier this year, Musk decided to restrict it behind a paywall. This decision doesn't seem to have gone over well with a significant portion of Twitter's user base, which is still hesitant to subscribe to Twitter Blue.
In addition to editable tweets, the Twitter Blue subscription also gives users access to more features; like the ability to format tweets with bold and italic text, post longer videos of up to two hours in length in 1080p resolution, and a promise to early access to all upcoming features.
Twitter Blue subscribers also get prioritized rankings both in conversations and in Twitter search results, and see fewer ads in their timelines. It remains to be seen if Twitter's decision to marginally increase the time window for editing tweets has any impact on the number of users signing up for Twitter Blue.