The ability to edit tweets has been by far the most-requested Twitter function, but the company has persistently declined to offer it. It seemed over the weekend that this might be changing, but what appeared to be a public test of an edit feature turned out to just be a bug …
Star Simpson spotted it.
The Verge’s Tom Warren created a video (below) demonstrating how it works.
OMG I think I just edited a tweet?? I wrote a tweet, noticed a benign single-letter typo, deleted the tweet and pressed “reply” again and found the full text of my previous tweet available to edit and send again. If this really is the feature test I think it is I am SO HAPPY.
To be clear, this was never showing editing of an original tweet, but rather editing a reply to a tweet – and even then only by deleting it and having your previous reply pop up effectively as suggested text. Still, that would have a step in the right direction, and at least opened the door. Here’s how it worked:
However, Twitter Comms quickly threw cold water on the idea, announcing that it was just a bug.
Twitter seems to be testing a neat way to edit tweets. If you delete a tweet when you reply to someone and then go to reply again it brings the old text back so you can correct your typo https://t.co/t4KKLNmjWT pic.twitter.com/YNQ6FSIlLS
— Tom Warren (@tomwarren) September 13, 2020
The Internet was not impressed.
sorry, this is a bug not anything we’re testing
— Twitter Comms (@TwitterComms) September 14, 2020
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey said back in January that the feature was not happening this year, and probably not at all – despite a tease in the summer.
pic.twitter.com/Zh14XNwfmW
— Bianconeri Capital 🦓 (@MEMBER31773) September 14, 2020
