Twitter dumps off its “favorites” button and replaces it with a “heart” so as to offers a better way for users to express their views.
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In the Twitterverse, until today at least, a tap of the star icon nominally indicated that something was a user’s “favorite”.
GREENE: There you have it. Newton explains that what made the favorite button special to him was that it could mean so many different things.
It said: “The heart, in contrast, is a universal symbol that resonates across languages, cultures, and time zones”. It has now been replaced by a pink heart, which according to the company is more expressive. Hence, you no longer favorite tweets; instead, you like them, just as it is on Facebook.
Hearts and “likes” will be rolling out to Twitter for iOS, Android, Windows 10, Twitter.com and TweetDeck starting Tuesday.
The Chrome extension Fav Forever was created by Brooklyn-based developer Reed Kavner and changes the hearts back to stars, but only on the Twitter desktop website.
Why this matters: Twitter is making itself more like Facebook and Instagram in an effort to be a more welcoming place to newcomers, who are familiar with the shorthand on other social networks but not with Twitter’s freakish insider language. The change divided Twitter fans, delighting a few while frustrating others.
The sudden change was felt all across the platform’s web service, iOS and Android apps, as well as Vine. The change has now been rolled out across Twitter on all platforms except Mac, which will be joined later by Vine on all platform.
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The move brings the Twitter into line with the company’s live-streaming video app Periscope, which also uses hearts for likes. It added that not everything a user liked could be a favourite, aiming to increase user engagement with a more widely usable feature.
