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 difficulty of the icon becomes even more obvious when wanting to favourite but not necessarily like something in my feed – say a brilliant piece of journalism about Australia’s treatment of refugees, something on the English cricket team or pretty much anything by Chris Kenny (sorry Chris).
Just as Facebook has struggled to come up with a button that people could use to acknowledge posts such as the announcement of the death of a loved one, Twitter has now forced people to consider what they like at a far more emotional level – the end result could be that people like things a lot less because like and love are far different emotions.
Salesforce gets Twitter Love 420 times, Richard Branson gets none.
So too, those who have used the star as a method of saving tweets they wanted to refer back to may be less willing to do so given the level of endorsement involved.
There is one positive aspect to the change though. The angry, vitriolic battles that often break out on Twitter over contentious issues will take on a whole new meaning with the heart button.
So, like it or not, welcome to Twitter’s Summer of Love!
- Simon Canning is a reporter at Mumbrella
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..
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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.
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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.
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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