Twitter, in their infinite wisdom, have decided to change Favourites, which had a star icon, to Likes, which have a heart icon. By Akarshan Kumar, Product Manager, announced the change on the Twitter blog; Hearts on Twitter. The blog explained Twitter’s reasoning for the change :
We hope you like what you see on Twitter and Vine today: hearts!
We are changing our star icon for 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.
The reaction on Twitter, hasn’t exactly been sharing that love. I’m more than a tad bemused as to how anybody could find a star confusing, a star is a pretty universal symbol too whilst being less irksome and patronising than a heart.
On a serious note, James Ball, special correspondent of Buzzfeed Uk, Tweets :
Favoriting an article about how 30 people died to read later looked faintly odd with a star, but downright evil with a heart.
— James Ball (@jamesrbuk) November 3, 2015
Meanwhile some people are pointing out that favourites weren’t used as intended, which happens a lot in technology :
@laurenlaverne 80% of my faves are stories on my reading list. Rarely stuff I actually like/approve of as haven’t read yet — Sophie Wilkinson (@sophwilkinson) November 3, 2015
This strongly suggests people would like a bookmark button. Indeed I’d like to see Twitter follow the example set by vBulletin powered forums such as SLUniverse, there you have options such as “Like”, “Agree”, “Disagree”, “Groan”, “WTF” yadda yadda yadda. That means people don’t have to reply to tell people what they think …. ok this is Twitter we’re talking about, people can’t help themselves, but that’s no excuse.
So is this some sort of bid to calm people down?
Would be very interesting if Twitter are trying to shift the tone of the conversation with the new ‘like’ heart. Will it becalm the trolls?
— Lauren Laverne (@laurenlaverne) November 3, 2015
Well I can actually envisage someone suggesting that this would be a good idea. However that person would clearly not realise that this is Twitter we’re talking about. I really can’t see this ending well.
Twitter, bring back the star and whilst you’re at it, add a bookmark button at the very least.