On November 3rd 2015, Twitter officially changed its star symbol for favorites to a heart symbol for likes. The change will take place on Vine as well, which is also owned by Twitter. The move was made in an effort to simplify the the Twitter experience and to woo new users to the service. Twitter's product manager, Akarshan Kumar said, "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."
Favorites came about shortly after the birth of Twitter. Originally, favorites were designed as a means of bookmarking tweets. Over time, the act of favoring was made possible in real time. This gave power users like journalists a way to save articles that they wanted to read at a later date. Retweets and Hashtags were added later. With the move to hearts, Twitter is taking a cue from Facebook which is considering adding emojis as a means of giving its users more ways to express themselves.
Opinions about this latest move by Twitter are mixed. It's hard to imagine that the change will make a huge difference, as long as the functionality of the new heart symbol remains the same as the star symbol. The gamble will be whether it is easier and more rewarding to like something than it is to favorite something.
No comments:
Post a Comment