The social network announced on November 3rd that is would drop the start on their tweets. Now heart will signify likes. This change is mostly a cosmetic change from Twitter. The functionality of liking or favoriting butting still works the same it is just now a heart instead of the star.
Why the Change?
The heart is the universal symbol for love. According to Twitter’s Blog, “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”. Another huge reason was that not every post is a favorite, however a person may like it. Favoriting became a challenge in the twittersphere. In Twitter’s research, they noticed that the overall engagement went down because of people not choosing to select a Tweet as a favorite”.
Favoriting was a bit of a difficult concept to grasp (e.g., can more than one thing truly be a favorite?). Liking is a bit more universal, likely due in part to Facebook’s ubiquitous use of the term.
“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,” Akarshan Kumar, a Twitter product manager, said in a blog post.
As a marketer of your website, the hope is that Twitter hearts could see an increase in overall engagement. Though the jury is still out, in engagement as it’s now easier than ever to interact with an individual tweet.
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