CALIFORNIA: In a move to match a feature offered by rival apps such as Signal and Telegram, WhatsApp has said that it will allow users to edit messages within 15 minutes after it is sent.
The instant-messaging service is owned by technology giant Meta, which also owns Instagram and Facebook.
In the upcoming weeks, WhatsApp said, this feature will be accessible to its 2 billion users including 487 million users in India, the highest number of its global users.
In a blog post on Monday, the messaging service wrote, “We’re delighted to give you more control over your chats, from fixing a minor mistake to adding further context to a message. You only need to long-press on a message that has already been delivered and select “Edit” from the menu for up to fifteen minutes after.”
To let receivers know that a message has been edited, the word “edited” will be added to the subject line. However, they won’t be informed of the changes made to the message over time. WhatsApp announced the new feature after Telegram and Signal introduced it.
Facebook debuted the edit feature approximately 10 years ago. Around that time, Facebook made the admission that more than half of its users were accessing the website via mobile devices, which are more prone to typos. Modified updates on Facebook are labelled as altered. Additionally, users can view a history of the revisions.
Twitter, the social media network owned by Elon Musk, said last year that it would allow its paying subscribers to modify their tweets.
In the 30 minutes after posting, tweets can be changed a few times. Twitter at that time stated that “Tweeting will feel less stressful and more approachable. You should be able to participate in the conversation in a way that makes sense to you, and we’ll keep working on ways to make it feel effortless to do just that.”
