The way you’ve “faved” (read: favorited) something on Twitter and its six-second video service Vine, is going to change starting today. The company has announced that it’s changing its star icon to a heart. The rationale: a star could be confusing for users, especially those who are just starting out on the service.
The new “fave” will be available today on Twitter’s iOS, Android, and Windows 10 apps, Twitter.com, TweetDeck, and also on Vine’s Android app and website. Updates for Vine for iOS and Twitter for Mac will be coming “soon”.
Converting to hearts isn’t exactly a surprise as the company had been experimenting with them with some users for the past few months. But why a heart? Twitter product manager Akarshan Kumar explained that the heart 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.”
In shifting this thinking, Twitter and Vine are changing their ways to follow what Periscope already has had since the beginning. And for some die-hard users, abandoning the star in favor of the heart will surely be met with some criticism. Of course, if Twitter thinks that simply changing a symbol is going to be enough to turn around its misfortunes, then we’re in for a really long and bumpy ride.
However, what changing to hearts will do is eliminate one thing users seem to have told Twitter is confusing: what does a star mean? It could mean a bookmark or something else. What Twitter likely wants a favorite to mean is simply that: a reaction that shows a user likes what that Tweet is all about.
Mark another victory for venture capitalist and early Twitter investor Chris Sacca who wrote in a lengthy post about what the company should be doing. In it, he remarked that Twitter should introduce “hearts” to Twitter and predicted that once done, “engagement across the entire service would explode.”
We shall see.
Heart this tweet, please?
Twitter replaces stars with hearts for favoriting Vines and tweets
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