Twitter edit button finally revealed in hidden code

The news comes after Twitter revealed it had been working on the feature for a year

Not Real News (Copyright 2017 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.)

Twitter’s long-rumoured edit button is slowly becoming more tangible as a screenshot of the unreleased feature has been shared on the social media site.

Researcher Jane Manchun Wong, who has revealed numerous features from social media sites by digging into their code, tweeted a photo of the edit button.

It appears via a drop down menu on the tweet, after which a window with the entire tweet will be laid out in front of the user – who can then delete the entire tweet or edit out specific typos. It appears that users will get 30 minutes after posting to make use of the edit feature.

After a change has been made, an ‘edited’ icon will show up next to the timestamp which other users can click on to show all the previous times a tweet has been changed.

It appears that every individual tweet will have its own identification with no content being deleted, but it is unclear whether the new version of the post will be shared across all websites – such as news publications with embedded tweets.

Under an old tweet will be another message that reads: “There’s a new version of this Tweet”. This will be used to inform people that changes have been made they might not have seen.

Twitter’s edit button has reportedly been in development since 2021. “We’ve been working on an edit feature since last year,” the social media giant tweeted earlier this month, adding that its earlier tweet on 1 April announcing ongoing work on the feature wasn’t a joke.

The company said it did not get the idea “from a poll,” hinting at Elon Musk’s Monday tweet asking whether his followers “want an edit button”. Mr Musk has since made a bid to buy the social media company for $44 billion.

This week, the billionaire is reportedly in talks with investors to finalise financing the deal.

The Tesla boss, who is the world’s richest person, has been in talks with large investment firms and “high-wealth individuals” to join his purchase of the platform.

These reportedly include former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, who could roll his 2.4 per cent stake in the social media platform into the deal, rather than cash out his almost $1bn worth of shares.