Twitter ditches favorites in favor of heart-shaped likes.
If you know anything about astronomy, you would have learned that all Stars eventually burn out and fade away. The same can be true about Twitter’s star-shaped “favorite” button. If you have logged onto Twitter recently, you may have noticed a change. On Tuesday November 3, 2015, the micro-blogging site abandoned their star-shaped “favorite” button.
What replaced it?
A heart-shaped “like” button.
Twitter hearts were reportedly tested this past summer and were met with positive responses. If you were to log onto your news feed, however, you may in fact see outrage.
Why the change?
Users across the social media platform questioned why the sudden change. Their answers were met in a blog post from Akarshan Kumar, Twitter’s project manager. According to Mr. Kumar:
“We are changing our star icon from favorites to a heart and we’ll be calling them likes. We want to make Twitter easier and more rewarding to use, and we know that at times the star could be confusing, especially to newcomers. You might like a lot of things, but not everything can be your favorite. The heart, in contrast, is a universal symbol that resonates across languages, cultures, and time zones. The heart is more expressive, enabling you to convey a range of emotions and easily connect with people. And in our tests, we found that people loved it.”
This sudden change almost mimics changes that Twitter’s rival, Facebook, made earlier in October. Facebook introduced emoji buttons as a new form of expressing your feelings on a post. They too explained that not everything you like might be good, so they wanted to accommodate users who expressed other feelings that “like.”
Why are people outraged?
One must ask, why is there such backlash with this change. After all, its just a few symbols on your desktop or mobile screen, right?
Perhaps it was an oversight by Twitter, but they may not truly understand what they have actually done. By changing the favorite option to like, it can be argued that they are taking away users’ individuality. When you favorite something, there was a reason for doing so: That particular tweet resonated with you. When you favor something, it is akin to bookmarking a webpage. Perhaps you found it interesting, informative or you found it funny. Whatever the case may be, your motives are your own.
Furthermore, think of how social media pages –particularly Facebook – are used these days. When you like a page, it is more or less a public endorsement.
By taking away the favorite option, Twitter is basically trying to tell you how to think. They are trying to tell you that you cannot have more than one favorite posts. They are also telling you that your actions – by liking a post – now have to be in the public’s eye.
Changes, Changes and More Changes
The favorite feature is arguably a cornerstone that defines Twitter. What’s next? Getting rid of the 140-character limit? Or perhaps they will eventually kill off the retweet feature? What’s stopping them from plucking the feathers off the Twitter bird with a new logo design?
Twitter’s favorites were created back in 2006, right around the birth of Twitter. In fact, the favorite feature even predates the like button that was introduced on Facebook back in 2009.
This change comes in the wake of many changes that Twitter has been implementing this year. Aside from a change in CEO, Twitter made two noteworthy changes.
First, it removed the 140-character limit in its direct message feature. While controversial, it proved to be beneficial to brand managers. The second change was the introduction of its “Moments” feature that was under the codename Project Lightning.
All of these new features parallel the reasoning behind Twitter’s most recent change: to simplify users’ experience as well as attract new people to the social media platform. Will this new change fulfill Twitter’s goal of attracting new users? Only time will tell.
What do you think about Twitter’s favorite feature change? Do you like it? Or does it make your heart hurt? Let us know! We would love to hear your opinions.
At Kraus Marketing we specialize in social media, SEO and other areas of digital marketing. For all the latest trends in the marketing industry, be sure to subscribe to our blog and follow us on Facebook and Twitter. For more information, contact us at 973-998-5742 or visit us online at www.KrausMarketing.com.