Sorry Twitter, as much as I’d like, my heart does not belong to you
Twitter has changed its star-shaped ‘favourite’ button to a heart-shaped ‘like’ button in an attempt to make it “more expressive”. But Simon Canning argues it will change the way he interacts with the network, and not for the better.
Overnight Twitter slipped in a subtle but significant change to how its users like what they see. The star became a heart and with that move they broke mine.
By moving from a benign symbol such as the star to the heart, something linked to our strongest emotions, Twitter has created an ambiguity that has bedevilled Facebook for years with the challenge of the “like” button.
No longer will I be so willing to favourite an item in my feed, the heart suggesting a level of endorsement beyond the simple act of liking something.
The examples used isn’t exactly comparing apples with apples. One is a promoted Tweet from August and the other an organic post from 3 minutes ago..
Good write up!
“Salesforce gets Twitter Love 420 times, Richard Branson gets none.”
The only thing I disagree with is your misleading comparison between Salesforce and Virgin “likes” – the Virgin tweet was live for a mere 3mins and the SF tweet was pushed out on Aug 12 AND was a PROMOTED tweet, so not the best example to use.
I think it’s a good thing Twitter is moving away from the ambiguity of the star – it enables:
– more clarity for the user and poster to understand the intent behind the interaction
– the ability to deliver more action-specific features to uncover user intent in the future
Is ‘love’ the primary emotion behind a heart – maybe in the traditional sense but in social media probably not – Instagram, and more recently Periscope, users ‘heart’ things everyday and I doubt they literally mean ‘love’ each and every time.
Hi Michelle,
The picture was not meant to be definitive, but just a light-hearted look at two tweets, sitting next to each other in the stream.
Richard has a little more love now.
Simon – Mumbrella