Twitter today announced the impending rollout of a new "Hearts" and "Likes" system for its social network, which will replace the traditional "Stars" and "Favorites" that's been used on the service for the past few years. The company cites a "confusing" quality to the star system that causes a disconnect between a new Twitter user and anyone who favorites their tweet. The heart, it believes, is more of a universal symbol of expression and connection.
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
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 hearts system will also make its way to the Twitter-owned Vine service, rounding out the social networks that the company owns -- including Periscope -- with a more uniform liking system. The company notes that the new update will roll out starting today on Twitter for iOS and Android, the web, Windows 10, TweetDeck, "and on Tweets across the Internet." Other services, like Twitter for Mac, will see support coming "soon."
Top Rated Comments
The heart seems like a Facebook / Instagram thing for teens who understand hearts are just emojis. The only time I've ever seen a heart emoji is when my sister texts me and she's 14. The star made sense. The heart is just useless. Even if it works the same as favorites did today, that doesn't mean it'll work that way 5 years from now when the only way to save a tweet will be to actually favorite it in Safari as a saved URL.
They're killing a feature that a lot of people used.