Twitter said to be working on a £2 subscription service

Twitter is working on a subscription service called ‘Twitter Blue’ that will provide users with some exclusive new features, according to a leak. 

Twitter Blue, which will cost $2.99/month (about £2), will include an ‘Undo Send’ timer for tweets, says Hong Kong-based app researcher and tipster Jane Manchun Wong. 

Undo Send previously leaked online in the form of an animation, showing a blue timer with the word ‘Undo’ that counts down after a user has tapped ‘post’. 

It’s thought the feature will give users a chance to think twice before they send potentially abusive messages to other users. 

Now, Wong has said that Undo Send will come under the Twitter Blue subscription service, suggesting it won’t be available to those who don’t subscribe.

Twitter Blue will also include another feature called Collections, which will let users ‘save and organise favourite tweets’ into folders so they’re easier to find later, she claims.

MailOnline has contacted Twitter regarding whether Twitter Blue is indeed in development or when it might roll out. 

The firm previously confirmed that Undo Send is in development. In a statement to MailOnline in March, a company spokesperson said: ‘We can confirm we are testing this feature.’

At the time, Wong had posted an animation of the leaked feature to her Twitter account. 

Undo Send – allegedly one tool included in ‘Twitter Blue’ – could reduce verbal abuse on the platform by giving users a chance to think twice (stock image) 

It shows her composing a tweet as normal and pressing the big blue ‘Tweet’ button.

A countdown timer of around five seconds then appears, giving the user the chance to press ‘Undo’.  

If users press Undo, it’s not known whether the tweet gets saved in drafts so it can be edited later. 

The blue bar is a timer that runs out after five seconds. App researcher and tipster Jane Manchun Wong posted the animation of the leaked feature to her Twitter account

The blue bar is a timer that runs out after five seconds. App researcher and tipster Jane Manchun Wong posted the animation of the leaked feature to her Twitter account

Undo Send seemed to divide Twitter users – some pointed out that it would mean there would be a frustrating five-second delay before their tweets actually appear. 

Twitter user @MasonRaeken said: ‘I just want the edit button like every other platform. I don’t want a dumb undo tweet notification every time I tweet … that’s not solving anything and becomes a nuisance.’ 

Another user, @jooroth18, called it ‘the next best thing to an edit button’ – the platform’s most-requested feature.  

Another feature rolled out by Twitter earlier this month suggests the firm is working on reducing verbal abuse on the platform.

The feature, for English-language users on iOS and Android, prompts users to review their ‘potentially harmful or offensive’ replies before posting them. 

It uses artificial intelligence (AI) to detect harmful language in a freshly-written reply to another user, before it’s been posted.

Screenshot of the new Twitter feature rolled out to iOS and Android earlier in May for English-speaking Twitter users. Upon typing out an expletive-strewn reply, Twitter users will see the pop-up, entitled 'Want to review this before tweeting?'

Screenshot of the new Twitter feature rolled out to iOS and Android earlier in May for English-speaking Twitter users. Upon typing out an expletive-strewn reply, Twitter users will see the pop-up, entitled ‘Want to review this before tweeting?’

It then sends users a pop-up notification asking them if they want to review their message before posting.  

According to Twitter, the prompt gives users the opportunity to ‘take a moment’ to consider the tweet by making edits or deleting the message altogether.  

Twitter still isn’t yielding to user demands to implement an edit button, however.  

One of the potential problems with letting users edit their tweets is the possibility that they could completely change the content of their post once it’s been heavily endorsed by millions of likes and retweets.

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey (pictured) doesn't seem to be yielding to user demands to introduce an edit button for tweets

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey (pictured) doesn’t seem to be yielding to user demands to introduce an edit button for tweets 

HOW COULD TWEET EDITING WORK? 

 Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has previously said two types of editing were under consideration.  

One would give users a brief window of time after the post was sent – five minutes, for example – to make any corrections. 

The other would work in a similar way to Facebook’s editing feature, allowing allows users to amend what they wrote at any time, but with a log of the changes visible.

With Undo Send, it seems Twitter has gone with the first option – although arguably this doesn’t constitute editing.  

This could lead to unimaginable confusion and misinformation, which is something social media platforms strive to avoid in the era of fake news. 

When asked in January last year if the edit button would be introduced in 2020, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey simply replied: ‘The answer is no’. 

In an interview with Wired, Dorsey said at the time: The reason there’s no edit button [and] there hasn’t been an edit button traditionally is we started as an SMS text messaging service. 

‘So as you all know, when you send a text, you can’t really take it back. We wanted to preserve that vibe and that feeling in the early days.’ 

Interestingly, Dorsey said Twitter toyed with introducing a short delay between when a user clicks send on a tweet and when it is actually posted – which is essentially what Undo Send is.

Despite the fact Undo Send has been confirmed by Twitter, Dorsey said at the time that his company would ‘probably never do it’.     

In 2018, Dorsey suggested that if the button would be added, it would most likely be designed to correct spelling errors. 

Twitter’s official account acknowledged the huge user demand for an edit button in July last year when it tweeted: ‘You can have an edit button when everyone wears a mask’, in a reference to the current pandemic.     

Twitter knows the edit button is the most requested feature online. In a tweet, the social media site said last year: 'You can have an edit button when everyone wears a mask'

Twitter knows the edit button is the most requested feature online. In a tweet, the social media site said last year: ‘You can have an edit button when everyone wears a mask’