The 140-character microblogging service Twitter has just replaced its Favorite star with a heart button. To many of its users dismay, they have a lot to say. Just about when Facebook announced a broader way for users to express themselves, Twitter decides to limit them.
Twitter's Favorite button is more like users' primary way to express agreement, laughter, support and many other sort of engagements. Now the feature is officially removed. The company said that it's replacing the Favorite with "likes" which are represented by red heart icons.
The change which is also being applied to Twitter-owned Vine, is meant to be the company's way to simplify user experience as it looks to attract more users on board.
"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," said Twitter's Product Manager Akarshan Kumar in a blog post. "You might like a lot of things, but not everything can be your favorite."
Twitter's Favorite feature was first released in 2006, three years before Facebook announced Like. Initially, the feature was meant to be a way for users to bookmark tweets they like. The feature was well-praised because the 140-character limit on Twitter which literally limits many things. Furthermore, at the time of the launch, Twitter has yet to introduce the ability to embed photos and videos to tweets.
Favorite quickly became a versatile tool for users.
As Twitter grew up, it started having communities powering it. To make people use the service more, Twitter introduced hashtags to organize contents around specific keywords. The much-praised Favorite became an even more powerful tool.
Likes And Hearts: The Currency For Emotions
You can say a lot with a heart. Introducing a new way to show how you feel on Twitter: https://t.co/WKBEmORXNW pic.twitter.com/G4ZGe0rDTP
— Twitter (@twitter) November 3, 2015
Twitter has tested the feature in Summer 2015, and it's rolling it out across its user base. To many people's believes, likes and hearts are becoming the currency to show emotions on the web, especially on social media networks. It's becoming a symbol a universally recognized entity. From Facebook to Instagram, to Twitter-owned Periscope, and now to Twitter. The hearts are becoming a standard icon for expressing something.
To many people's dismay, Favorite was something that made Twitter unique. It's the thing that makes the service distinctive and appealing. Despite not everyone on Twitter used this feature, those that had, did found it surprisingly powerful.
No matter how popular Favorite was to users, it didn't have much of a use to advertisers. Favorite may have powered many loyal and influential users, but it didn't convert much of the data to Twitter so it can be a way to make a return of revenue.
Co-founder Jack Dorsey who returned as the company's CEO promised a series of "bold moves" to reignite user growth.
Twitter's new bold move in changing engagement in its platform is indeed making it less versatile, less powerful. But just like any other new features, it's a big bet on casual users. The company has bet to give up some of its loyal users to get more new users. And if that is what it aims, it did certainly well. The company has just added 4 million active users in the last few months, and dumping the Favorite feature was around that moment.
Twitter is struggling to add new users. Introducing hearts makes sense. The company's history of changing its products is to reflect emergent user behavior. So if something looks good for new users, consider that done.
Pushing hearts to Twitter is about more than familiarity: it's Twitter's way to establish uniformity across its brand and its interfaces. What Twitter wants is to create a common language for its global community.