Twitter has finally introduced a like button on their platform, however it came at the expense of the button for favouriting a tweet- thus making it not as popular as they probably expected.
Favouriting a tweet has always been on the platform since the beginning, and as many people have noted, was a great way to bookmark a tweet for reading at a later date.
However, now to bookmark a tweet one would probably have to like it under twitter’s new service. The news was announced by the site on November 3.
“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 company said in the blog post with the announcement.
“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 new feature is represented by a heart button, replacing the star that was used for the favourites.
To a man, twitter users are not pleased with the change.
@twitter Can we talk about this for a second?
— Nina Mandell (@ninamandell) November 3, 2015
@iancunliffe @3onyourside @twitter it's like id facebook changed it's like button to a love button or something
— Mika (@mikaxd0) November 3, 2015
.@twitter can journalists get a "save" button then? Looks bad if I'm "hearting" a fatal fire tweet from another reporter.
— Nate Benson (@natebenson) November 3, 2015
.@natebenson @twitter yeah. I prefer not to publicly 'like' things I haven't even read yet, which is how I used the star, as a bookmark.
— Anastasia Ashman (@AnastasiaAshman) November 3, 2015