17 ms·

Hearts on Twitter

191 points by janvdberg 11y ago

janvdberg 11y ago
I think this is a rather significant change. Whereas before a favorite was the equivalent of a bookmark now it is more in line with the Facebook like or Instagram 'heart'. This is a clear push for more engagement. I personally like it. But I would still like to keep an option for bookmarking/read later (i.e. how I use the favorite button now).
- TillE 11y ago
  Objectively, it is a little weird for Twitter to have its own bookmarking function, with a nice convenient list that you (or anyone) can refer to. But that's exactly how I use "favorite". It's really useful, whether it's a cute picture I want to share with someone later or something more informative. "Like" does nothing for me; I don't always want to imply approval by clicking that button.
  - janvdberg 11y ago
    I use it the same way. But there have also been many times that I want to ACKNOWLEDGE that I enjoyed/liked/laughed at a tweet without polluting my favorites. A like button does just that. However I don't like that they just switched the favorites over to likes. They should have added a new option and maybe hidden the favorite option a bit more (if it's that important to them).
  - petercooper 11y ago
    Ditto. Mostly because I read Twitter while bored on my phone and want to investigate things later when I'm on a proper computer.
    - frostmatthew 11y ago
      Evernote (or similar) serves this function well, even better than a "favorite" because I can save/clip things from other sources. i.e. when I have time to read all the things I thought looked interesting I only need to to go Evernote, not to multiple sites. A long press on Twitter's native [Android] app and selecting "Share via..." will allow you to easily/quickly save it to Evernote (or whatever similar service you may use).
  - brlewis 11y ago
    The English word "favorite" implies approval every bit as much as "like" does. Plenty of people use "like" the way you use "favorite", indicating attention, not that your friend's cat's death is your "favorite" news of the day or that you "like" the news.
    - JoshTriplett 11y ago
      Perhaps, but the use of the "star" aligned with common usage on other sites to highlight something. And people often talked about "starring" tweets rather than "favoriting" tweets. If anything, it would have made more sense to change it from "favorite" to "star".
    - the_watcher 11y ago
      Sure, when speaking about the formal English language. In terms of social platforms, however, favorite and like have very different connotations. Favorite implies something far less common than a like. Most people think of a favorite as something they'd like to come back to, while no one really pays attention to every thing they've liked on FB or Instagram
      - teaneedz 11y ago
        Yes! Favorite has meaning beyond the literal for anyone who has been online for a few days. I fav to bookmark or give a simple thumbs up. Hearts break that meaning.
    - oneeyedpigeon 11y ago
      In fact, we're looking right now at a site that mixes up the meanings of like and favourite with no apparent problem.
    - richmarr 11y ago
      > The English word "favorite" implies approval every bit as much as "like" does Personally I don't buy this. I'm used to 'favourites' and 'bookmarks' being used interchangably by browsers, which reduces the approval implication of that term... and the heart symbol doesn't mean 'like' to me, it means 'love', so has a higher level of implied approval than in your comparison.
  - jghn 11y ago
    I've generally seen "favorite" to mean "I don't disagree with you per se but I'm not going to reply"
- gjreda 11y ago
  There are a few services that work with Twitter to do this - Pocket comes to mind. I know their Chrome extension will place "Pocket" buttons on each tweet allowing you to save them for later. Similarly, a long button press on iOS will allow you to send a link from within Twitter to Pocket.
- sp332 11y ago
  I'd been using the Favorite as a Like/Heart already. I wonder how many people were using it as a bookmark.
  - stevesearer 11y ago
    A lot of people use it as a way to get your attention without retweeting the post to their feed. I've started getting an increase in what seems to be automated favoriting (now liking), which is so incredibly annoying that I have to end up muting those users.
  - Splendor 11y ago
    When I first joined twitter I assumed that "favorites" were bookmarks and didn't realize that twitter notified users when you favorited a tweet.
  - jonlucc 11y ago
    It's interesting to me because Facebook just made the news recently for saying they'd try to come up with something akin to dislike because the "like" is too positive a sentiment for many situations (death of a relative, bad day at work, whatever). In the wake of that, Twitter didn't say "well the favorite is already neutral of emotions, and is more akin to showing support for the thing, positive or negative". Instead, they said "oooh, we want the problem Facebook is facing".
  - hokkos 11y ago
    Lot of people used it as "shit user said"
- liotier 11y ago
  I'll keep using it as a bookmark anyway...
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- mbesto 11y ago
  I'd argue most people were using it as a "like" anyway.
- agumonkey 11y ago
  I just woke up, and seeing the new page threw me off. It does completely change the sentiment, and evoke a completely different set of idea to see tiny hearts rather than generic impersonal 'fav'icons.
- DanBC 11y ago
  I'd rather they just gave me a better search of what's been on my timeline.
- zallarak 11y ago
  I disagree. It is wholly insignificant in the grand scheme of things. Twitter can't be fixed by putting so much thought into an icon - the core engagement of it is slightly broken. Chris Sacca had a great article on what is wrong with Twitter [1]. TLDR: changing stars to hearts won't move then needle. The fact that they devoted an entire blog post to it makes me feel like they're headed in the wrong direction. [1]: http://lowercasecapital.com/2015/06/03/what-twitter-can-be-2/ http://lowercasecapital.com/2015/06/03/what-twitter-can-be-2...
- InclinedPlane 11y ago
  That's already been the way people have been using the favstar on twitter. The difference now is that it'll be obvious to more people that this is the main purpose of the feature. That plus now it'll be slightly different if you want to "favorite" something that is negative (the "like" problem).
deleted 11y ago
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atomi 11y ago
Yeah that's great just as long as the API calls dont change.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- miradu 11y ago
  no API changes: https://blog.twitter.com/2015/hearts-for-developers https://blog.twitter.com/2015/hearts-for-developers
egusa 11y ago
I think its a good idea, but the "like" to me feels too much like Facebook.
agentgt 11y ago
I am sort of tired of the ole lets make it emotional to make it stick [1] tactic. Of course this is just my opinion but I sort of liked how Twitter was more newsy and less friendsy. I would even prefer the star to be a bookmark but I suppose it doesn't scale down well (size wise). [1]: http://www.engineerguy.com/white-papers/made-to-stick.htm http://www.engineerguy.com/white-papers/made-to-stick.htm (see chapter 5)
midgetjones 11y ago
If you click the link to the twitter username at the top of that article, you get to a page which still shows the favourites star rather than the full twitter feed with hearts https://twitter.com/intent/user?screen_name=akik https://twitter.com/intent/user?screen_name=akik
r3bl 11y ago
> 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. Wow. Really?
- pilif 11y ago
  Honestly, it was for me when I started with twitter for real in 2010 (my account is from 2006, but I haven't really used it until 2010). It was unclear to me whether I should be using this as a kind of bookmark-feature as a help for me to remember tweets to get back to or whether this was a social signal I'd be sending to the author of the tweet. The would make that much more clear to me, though of course, I have since learned how to use twitter properly (I hope).
  - ZanyProgrammer 11y ago
    I'm surprised people associate stars with bookmarks (people still bookmark websites?) rather than a seal of approval.
    - jakeway 11y ago
      Both Chrome and Firefox use a star icon as a shortcut to bookmark a page. I find it more surprising that you don't think people still bookmark websites. What do you use to remember links to pages you might want to visit again in the future?
      - devit 11y ago
        You can often type some text that you remember from the URL or title in the URL bar and browsers will search the history and present you a set of pages you visited including the one you want. Effectively it's like bookmarking everything and then using the keyboard to navigate among the bookmarks. Normal bookmarks are still necessary if you need to record a set of multiple pages that meet some criteria.
        11y ago
jscheel 11y ago
In the past, I used stars as bookmarking. However, I noticed a shift towards more "like" behavior about 1-2 years ago amongst my twitter network.
- josu 11y ago
  More than a like, I understand it as a "I acknowledge your response, but I have nothing to add. Have a good day!"
- r3bl 11y ago
  From my experience, favorite seemed to be used more as an "interesting, but not interesting enough to pass it on to other people" button.
- praseodym 11y ago
  In the past, Twitter didn't send notifications to anyone about what you favorited. They do now, which is weird when trying to use it as a bookmarking tool.
deleted 11y ago
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draw_down 11y ago
Wow, I am already sick of hearing about this. Star -> heart. Got it.
dpeck 11y ago
I don' believe that the wording could be more condescending if they tried to make it that way.
hk__2 11y ago
I assume that’s in line with them adding the birthday field on user profiles. People used to Facebook will like more tweets than with the previous star/favorite system and thus provide more accurate data for ads.
stevewillows 11y ago
I've always viewed and used hearts / stars / likes as a way of saying 'I have nothing else to add to this conversation.'
- Amorymeltzer 11y ago
  Indeed. One of my main uses for emoji is the thumbs-up/heart/etc., likewise signalling "Over-and-out." And yes, I realize that, technically, "over-and-out" is incorrect, it should be just "out".
- jonlucc 11y ago
  Sort of an upvote on that platform; same here.
tildlyo 11y ago
Favourite was the generic thing for acknowledging a post whether you like it, relate to it, or whatever...so now if someone has bad news (eg. someone dies) what do you do? 'like it'?
- moron4hire 11y ago
  So previously you were saying them dying was your favorite thing. I don't get how this is different.
fideloper 11y ago
My assumption on any changes Twitter makes is that it's powered by the hope of future ad revenue. I see that potential for ads in Moments. I would guess Hearts will get tweaked in the future to behave in a way that will make them something of value to brands (at least, Twitter hopes). Similar to brands spending money for Facebook Likes (and thus getting their logos in people's feeds), I see Hearts as a first move towards a similar feature/concept. Personally I like this change (as it is now) because I've only ever used stars as a "like" button, knowing people on the other end see that in their timeline. It's a very useful social tool for acknowledgement.
Grue3 11y ago
So now it's like Tumblr. Now they only need to remove 140-character limit and there will be no differences at all. "The heart, in contrast, is a universal symbol that resonates across languages, cultures, and time zones." I don't really buy it. Many countries have stars in their flags/coats of arms. There's no such unified symbolism for hearts. For example Chinese pictogram for heart is 心.
- omni 11y ago
  > Many countries have stars in their flags/coats of arms. And the meaning of stars on flags is definitely not "this is something I really like." It's not a clear symbol of anything.
  - nationcrafting 11y ago
    It'd be surreal if the stars on their flags were bookmarks.
- nosuchthing 11y ago
  UI/UX design. Native external media integration. Twitter does a weird thing where they crop the top and bottom of photos, requiring you to click it to see more of the image. For 140 character posts, somehow the twitter design has ended up as an cumbersome and cluttered webpage. Interesting to think about how similar Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, and Ello are. Knowing how easily any user base can jump ship if one starts to go down, others are ready to pick up the deserters in a heartbeat.
- chillacy 11y ago
  If there's anything anthropology has taught us, it's that the claim "X is a universal symbol that resonates across languages, cultures, and time zones" is almost certainly not the case. There are languages without nouns, languages with only two colors, languages with no tenses to differentiate time, etc. Maybe twitter meant "it's a universal symbol that resonates across cultures which derive from the european middle ages" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heart_(symbol) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heart_(symbol)
chuckgreenman 11y ago
TLDR + Sarcasm: "Today we made twitter a little bit more like facebook, because lets face it, some people are confused by stars and the word favorite."
dombili 11y ago
I'm glad they're focusing on fixing major problems such as newcomers finding the functionality of the favorite button confusing, instead of trying to find new ways to deal with abuse on Twitter.
deleted 11y ago
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tdkl 11y ago
I don't use Twitter, but this sounds more confusing now. Stars are used throughout other services or systems for favoriting something such as bookmarks and if I "star it", I can revisit it in the future. But that means only I can see it. Hearts on Instagram are broadcasted to my followers, Facebook likes as well. Is this also the case on Twitter now? There's a difference between saving something for personal recollection and also broadcasting it.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- jonknee 11y ago
  You could previously view people's favorites. Example: https://twitter.com/gruber/favorites https://twitter.com/gruber/favorites
mschuster91 11y ago
Not long before Twitter will blend in with Failbook and Instagram. A pity, but apparently neccessary as Twitter needs fresh cash. The problem: the money is in the high-active users, not in the noobs using Twitter for an hour and then moving along. And a significant chunk of said high-active users will depart from Twitter because, like FB, the users haven't been consulted in any way... edit: If Twitter REALLY wanted to improve its experience, it should... 1) fix tab-navigation to work like text->submitbutton, not text->media->navigation->poll->submitbutton 2) only auto-complete with tab when the current word begins with an @. No, if I just type "example"<tab> I DO NOT want a random user with "example" in the name expanded. 3) in the Android app, when I'm scrolling 2h behind and rt'ing a kitten image, I DO NOT want to jump right to the top and have to scroll aaaallll the way down again.
chinathrow 11y ago
I've seen them testing this and the icon style changes for months now, having had three different test screens spread over three different accounts. On mobile.
mathgeek 11y ago
The trend continues towards "everyone looks like Facebook:" http://readwrite.com/2014/06/04/social-networks-all-look-alike http://readwrite.com/2014/06/04/social-networks-all-look-ali...
armandososa 11y ago
I'm bummed. I used stars as a "save-for-later" feature. I like the idea of having the option to explicitly endorse something you like, but I will miss the bookmark functionality. Even Facebook has a "save" feature (a little hidden in a menu, but that's ok for me) and they seem to use it effectively for engagement purposes. I think Twitter is missing an opportunity here.
- moron4hire 11y ago
  It's literally just a change of icon. You may continue to use it exactly as you were using it before.
  - codezero 11y ago
    If it were that simple, they wouldn't write a post about their justification for choosing a heart over a star, and changing it from favorite to like. They expect the underlying behavior/use to change, or they wouldn't have bothered making such a significant change to a core feature. This would be like changing Retweet to Share.
    - ablation 11y ago
      But is that stopping YOU from behaving like that if you know it's literally just a change of icon? And if the change of icon bothers people that much, just install Tweetdeck. It's still a star in there (much like other inconsistencies across Twitter's apps/platforms).
      - codezero 11y ago
        Yes, it's likely to change my behavior because the change is so visible it makes me think about it, and the best interaction is one I don't have to think about. Twitter has asked developers to update their apps to reflect the change, if you don't your app will be blocked, so, there's that.
        deleted 11y ago
codezero 11y ago
A heart conveys much more emotion than "like" or "favorite" – it's just an emoji, but still, it seems significant enough to me that I'll do less liking on Twitter. Like also carries a connotation over from Facebook – liking a page on Facebook attaches it to my profile, and potentially feeds me content based on that, will this happen on Twitter? I can't assume it won't.
- frostmatthew 11y ago
  > liking a page on Facebook attaches it to my profile, and potentially feeds me content based on that, will this happen on Twitter? I can't assume it won't. Your favorites/likes have always been visible to other users. e.g. here are the likes of the Twitter account in your HN profile https://twitter.com/radiofreejohn/favorites https://twitter.com/radiofreejohn/favorites (interesting they've changed the text in the profiles to likes but the URL is still favorites). [Perhaps I'm misunderstanding "will this happen on Twitter" and you're referring to someday filtering feeds...if that were to ever happen I imagine they would use this data regardless of what they call it]
  - codezero 11y ago
    Being visible and being a persistent measure of preference is different. Twitter is very ephemeral and my worry is that this will imply less ephemerality. It's an irrational worry.
moron4hire 11y ago
If nobody had said anything, I would have never noticed the change. People are complaining and/or celebrating this change over some notion that it changes what the action "says". For people who agree that it changes what you are saying, they seem to universally agree it's changing from "I bookmarked this" to "I endorse this". Here's the thing: if they weren't meant as endorsements before, then why was the list of them public, and why were they called "favorites"? Since when does publicly marking something as a "favorite" translate to a neutral "I am expressing no opinion on this matter, merely marking it for later retrieval"? Because I can guarantee you: whenever you star/favorite/like/whatever-the-hell-we're-calling-it-today a tweet/post/blog/picture/whatever-site-we're-on-today in a public way with notification back to the original poster, it always gets interpreted as interest/enjoyment/endorsement. It's literally nothing more than changing the icon. Same button, different color. It does the same thing: make a public notice that you touched that button on that tweet. If you weren't using it for what it was meant for before, you can continue to use it against what it's meant for today. You all are literally bike-shedding right now.
xjay 11y ago
Twitter has some dual personality when it comes to UX. Recently, Twitter quietly started relying on the HTTP Referrer field. That's OK, I guess, except they did nothing to inform their users about it, which is easy for them to check and report on specifically. Instead, they let their users get confused by generic messages when attempting to post, or change settings, trying all sorts of things. If you want to require HTTP referrer, you should know what that means, and why many may have it disabled. It's also interesting to see the social media sites and the web converging on using the same types of icons. All because of the mobile platform and a certain apple OS, with the cog wheel and menu symbol. Heart versus star: I think the heart miscommunicates the function. I can't identify with it anymore, as I don't tend to "heart things". Also, they didn't just change the icon, they changed the color as well. The star was a weak yellow. The heart is a darker, burning red, and therefore sticks out more in contrast with the white.
- adsche 11y ago
  > Recently, Twitter quietly started relying on the HTTP Referrer field. Yes! It took me weeks to figure that one out. In three years without Referer that was only my second non-obvious error caused by that. And then they started with the polls. You can create polls from twitter web, but you cannot answer one. You just see a tweet from somebody asking a question. Nothing else, no way to even see that it is a poll. Same in tweetdeck (which is also by twitter). Confusing strategy, at least for me.
  - _jomo 11y ago
    > You can create polls from twitter web, but you cannot answer one. AFAIK this is only a bug with FirefoxDev & IndexedDB. It should work in other browsers or in private mode, where IndexedDB is disabled.
iconjack 11y ago
From the post: "The heart is more expressive, enabling you to convey a range of emotions and easily connect with people." It's still just one bit, right? How does it enable conveying a range of emotions?
- betenoire 11y ago
  context provides the other bits. 'hearting' a baby announcement is not the same as 'hearting' a funny meme.
  - kenko 11y ago
    Right, but since the context hasn't changed, they haven't increased the range of things you can convey in a given context, they've just changed what it conveys.
    - jsprogrammer 11y ago
      They have made claims about what it conveys. Bottom line is that it's just a button that notifies the other person that you pushed it.
  - lifeformed 11y ago
    and now you can finally 'heart' the latest atrocity!
- samskeller 11y ago
  This was the dumbest part of the post, I thought. They just changed its name... how does this make it easier to connect with people?
- saint_fiasco 11y ago
  If anything, having it convey more stuff is a bad thing, because it increases ambiguity.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
oldmanjay 11y ago
That's a heck of a lot of words for a tiny semantically void change. A more cynical me would assume a whole bunch of product people at twitter are well familiar with justifying their job in the face of obvious uselessness.
- Uhhrrr 11y ago
  Seems like a "New Coke"-type publicity stunt, doesn't it?
soyiuz 11y ago
Twitter lost the plot. Oh look, riots in Istabul. Four people injured. I guess I'd better heart that one. Because I love violence... What is the storyline here? Many people use Twitter for live coverage of events, to organize protests, and to keep up with professional news. How does a heart fit into these use cases??
- hackaflocka 11y ago
  You're right... but even "favorites" means something similar to a lot of people (instead of what it means to most of us who've been long-time users of the internet -- "bookmarks"). I agree that this is going to be an issue going forward.
  - soyiuz 11y ago
    Yes, but at least "favorites" were somewhat more neutral. They still prevented me from "favoriting" negative news, as it felt like an endorsement. Hearts work well for things like family photos and cats--the traditional strengths of Facebook. But Twitter's point of differentiation was always live, rapidly developing news. Conferences. Sharp commentary. Leaks. Announcements. A heart is just not the right symbol in these contexts. Going for the broader market risks weakening the core use cases, which set the platform apart in the first place.
    - toomuchtodo 11y ago
      Throw likes and favorites out; use "remember". That's the only reason I like or now, favorite, something on Twitter; it has some significance to me (either positive or negative) that I may want to revisit.
      - teaneedz 11y ago
        I kind of like that idea. Remember can mean so much and fits more use cases.
    - hackaflocka 11y ago
staunch 11y ago
Another useless change. If you want to try out something that makes Twitter far more usable, try removing retweets. 1. Install uBlock Origin. 2. My Filters add: http://twitter.com http://twitter.com ## .tweet[data-retweeter] 3. Enjoy a Twitter without retweets.
- huac 11y ago
  Retweets are great. If you think the people you follow retweet bad stuff, you need to follow better people. edit: I think the converse might be more accurate - if the people you follow retweet bad stuff, then the regular tweets probably aren't good either.
  - staunch 11y ago
    Have you tried turning off retweets? It makes @pmarca's feed his actual thoughts instead of a mess of stuff.
  - frostmatthew 11y ago
    > If you think the people you follow retweet bad stuff, you need to follow better people. That's not a very good generalization - I have retweets turned off for many accounts I follow, some because I found I was interested in what they tweeted (so I wouldn't want to unfollow them) but less interested in what they retweet, but in most cases it's because I try to keep my feed relatively low-volume and some people are extremely liberal with their retweets so turning off retweets for those accounts keeps my feed more manageable.
  - MichaelGG 11y ago
    I tried following good people on Twitter. Even some of the popular users on here, or other highly intelligent and respected people. I cannot think of anyone better to follow. I can't do it. There's so, so much shit. It's a constant storm of random "news" plus attempts at being clever. Retweets amplify this significantly. And then Twitter's web UI make the entire thing unusable. Click an image? Lose your place in a stream. It's an embarrassingly bad UI that seems designed to toss me to locations that are anything but where I was reading.
agumonkey 11y ago
Completely reminds me of http://borislavkiprin.com/2014/01/27/meanings-favorite-retweet/ http://borislavkiprin.com/2014/01/27/meanings-favorite-retwe...
subnaught 11y ago
Translation: Our users don't understand our service, and we don't either, so we'll just try and mimic a successful one.
- smtddr 11y ago
  That's one translation. Another could be: "Our users are being innovate and using our services in ways we didn't completely anticipate, therefore we are trying to let our products grow "organically" and will make changes that augment what our users appear to be doing." But this is kind of 2 sides of the same coin.
  - wldcordeiro 11y ago
    This seems more likely as hashtags and mentions both came from how users were using Twitter, they weren't originally in Twitter.
  - malgb 11y ago
    That's just spin. Facebook has picked the right bandwagon so Twitter is jumping on. At the end of the day, it's just a link on a website.
  - subnaught 11y ago
    I would be more sympathetic to that explanation if the feature being rolled out was somehow novel or at least adding new functionality. But it's not, it's just removing a small quirk and making the service more like everything else on the internet.
- felipeerias 11y ago
  It is exactly that. For example, imagine if Facebook made a public page listing all the times that you have ever clicked "like" on something. Weird, right? Twitter just made that.
pmlnr 11y ago
500px has favourites (heart) and like (thumbs up). I believe they are one of the few who understands there's a difference; it's unfortunate that most of the social media doesn't.
the_watcher 11y ago
Starring a tweet always seemed a bit odd to me, except when using it to bookmark something for later. Hearts imply likes, based on other social platforms, which will almost certainly lead to more use. I found myself rarely, if ever, starring tweets, which actually made the function more useful (looking at my favorites is a short list of tweets I wanted to remember).
justizin 11y ago
Two stories about Twitter circulating today: First, The only black manager in product or engineering left after encountering tone-deaf collaboration in measuring and increasing diversity. Second, They changed the star to a heart.
demian 11y ago
I "love" this tweet about how 10 people died on an earthquake last week. It has the same problem as "Like".
- corobo 11y ago
  As opposed to marking 10 people dying as a favourite? They both imply positive feelings towards the tweet being tagged As mentioned elsewhere if they were trying to get away from the positive connotations "Remember" would be a better name for it
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
homulilly 11y ago
Translation: Our business is failing and we're completely clueless about what to do but we want to look like we're trying so uh here's a new icon.
evv 11y ago
While we're on the subject, can somebody explain the behavioral difference between a star (or heart, whatever) and a retweet? They seem to have nearly the exact same effect
- colmvp 11y ago
  A retweet means the tweet being retweeted will show up on the feed of people who are following you. Star/Favoriting is just like a personal bookmark. It won't automatically show up on followers feeds.
  - benjiweber 11y ago
    They do also show your favourites in your followers feeds at times. I see it quite frequently. Retweets always show up to your followers. Favourites sometimes do. I don't know how they decide to show them in the main feed.
- saisi 11y ago
  Using Facebook for comparison, a retweet is similar to the 'share' button. Heart parallels the 'like' button. Retweeting explicitly draws your followers' attention to the tweet. While a heart seems to have a multitude of purposes: right from expressing sentiment to bookmarking. Twitter in this case wishes to make it clear to new users that Heart is how they express sentiment. Behaviorally, retweets tend to be expression of public endorsement. While hearts(previously favorites) are a semi-private invocation of approval or interest
- jsprogrammer 11y ago
  A retweet puts the tweet into your public feed, as if you had tweeted it (of course, in the UI it is correctly attributed to the original author). A favorite/star/heart/like/"the other button", just flags the tweet in your account so that you can refer to it easier later (in another, less public feed).
BHSPitMonkey 11y ago
Hopefully I'm not the only person who spent a good 10 seconds staring at this heart/circle/play-icon hybrid thinking it was supposed to be the new icon being unveiled: http://i.imgur.com/pKCfDmj.png http://i.imgur.com/pKCfDmj.png
findjashua 11y ago
dear twitter, bookmarks & likes are 2 separate things
deleted 11y ago
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m1 11y ago
For people wanting to revert to the old favourites icon: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/twitter-old-favourite/lkfbecccmniadcbdhkeepdkfekhloinc https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/twitter-old-favour...
- oliv__ 11y ago
  Well... that was fast!
bovermyer 11y ago
This doesn't really matter to me. What I'm curious about, though, is a far more general question that this brings to mind. How do you build a social network that sustains itself through community rather than advertising dollars? Is that even possible?
- jgroszko 11y ago
  Wikipedia has a yearly donation drive. I'd be incredibly surprised if Twitter took that path though.
- venomsnake 11y ago
  Reddit gold is one way. The way linux distros mirrors work show that there are entities willing to provide bandwidth and servers for no return. You could decentralize it and use end users bandwidth and storage to make it cheap to operate. The crucial problem is the onboarding of users. Once you reach critical mass everything else is easy.
  - cwyers 11y ago
    > Reddit gold is one way. Reddit seems to spend more than it brings in in a year, if reports that it had $20 million in cash when Conde Nast spun them off and had $18 million in 2013 are true.(1) Reddit also has ads. It doesn't seem like Reddit gold is sufficient to keep a large site afloat. (1) http://allthingsd.com/20130109/reddits-funding-round-is-for-real-and-its-only-for-angels/ http://allthingsd.com/20130109/reddits-funding-round-is-for-...
gukov 11y ago
There was nothing worse than allowing to make tweets viral by gaming people into voting: "retweet if you agree, star if you disagree." Retweeting a tweet makes it infinitely more popular than starring. It does look like twitter has started rolling out a proper polling feature.
tolmasky 11y ago
Twitter should have been bold and merged retweet and favorite into heart. Instead it's now more confusing which you should do. On other social networks hearts are kind of the redispersal mechanism, whereas I think what Twitter wants is more retweets -- more people introducing more people to each other.
n72 11y ago
And to think I was going to buy a heap load of TWTR yesterday!
apricot13 11y ago
I thought they had added hearts along with stars that would have made sense! Stars for bookmarking and hearts for liking/showing appreciation. Stars doesn't send a notification to the poster but a heart does.
vool 11y ago
So my 'like' show up under my 'favorites' Clear as mud ! https://twitter.com/favorites https://twitter.com/favorites oh https://twitter.com/likes https://twitter.com/likes
bingobob 11y ago
I don't want a heart or fav a tweet but there are times i do wanna Bookmark one to read a link later.
- InclinedPlane 11y ago
  Same functionality.
  - bingobob 11y ago
    no every time someone fav/hearts a tweet the creator of that tweet gets a message saying someone loves there tweet, if it was just a bookmark then they wouldn't get this
hack_mmmm 11y ago
Companies like Twitter, Facebook have rolled out (Like/Hearts/emotions) button to posts. I think "heart" button is not appropriate categorization for real time contents. Sometimes we just want to express on things if they are relevant. The emotion part "Like, heart, dislike, chill, etc" is just an aftermath to the real intent. Problem: "heart" can not express emotion that community wants to just share, it may not necessarily be likable. Example, Tweet about violence in Middle east. I want to just not give it a "heart" but some other emotion like "disgrace, shame" etc. Idea: To solve this problem, I would say the real symbol should be "Star", instead of "heart, like" etc. "Star" means you want to buzz in with this article but not classify your emotion. What do you think?
- rco8786 11y ago
  > To solve this problem, I would say the real symbol should be "Star" Are you ... what?
dkarapetyan 11y ago
This is hilarious. I mean in the absence of actual substantive things to do they are just doing fluffy things. How does this make their developer relations better in any way? Wasn't that something that was supposed to be coming? In the meantime we get a heart instead of a star? I mean what the hell? Are they taking the playbook from yahoo? Maybe they should make their logo more "showy" while they're at it.
dreamdu5t 11y ago
They might as well just announce in a PR that they have no idea what they're doing.
madisonmay 11y ago
Honestly this addition was so seamless I thought it had always been that way. Definitely liked a few things on twitter before I realized what I was doing.
craigvas 11y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10507474 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10507474

191 points by janvdberg 11y ago

I think this is a rather significant change. Whereas before a favorite was the equivalent of a bookmark now it is more in line with the Facebook like or Instagram 'heart'. This is a clear push for more engagement. I personally like it. But I would still like to keep an option for bookmarking/read later (i.e. how I use the favorite button now).

TillE 11y ago
Objectively, it is a little weird for Twitter to have its own bookmarking function, with a nice convenient list that you (or anyone) can refer to. But that's exactly how I use "favorite". It's really useful, whether it's a cute picture I want to share with someone later or something more informative. "Like" does nothing for me; I don't always want to imply approval by clicking that button.
- janvdberg 11y ago
  I use it the same way. But there have also been many times that I want to ACKNOWLEDGE that I enjoyed/liked/laughed at a tweet without polluting my favorites. A like button does just that. However I don't like that they just switched the favorites over to likes. They should have added a new option and maybe hidden the favorite option a bit more (if it's that important to them).
- petercooper 11y ago
  Ditto. Mostly because I read Twitter while bored on my phone and want to investigate things later when I'm on a proper computer.
  - frostmatthew 11y ago
    Evernote (or similar) serves this function well, even better than a "favorite" because I can save/clip things from other sources. i.e. when I have time to read all the things I thought looked interesting I only need to to go Evernote, not to multiple sites. A long press on Twitter's native [Android] app and selecting "Share via..." will allow you to easily/quickly save it to Evernote (or whatever similar service you may use).
- brlewis 11y ago
  The English word "favorite" implies approval every bit as much as "like" does. Plenty of people use "like" the way you use "favorite", indicating attention, not that your friend's cat's death is your "favorite" news of the day or that you "like" the news.
  - JoshTriplett 11y ago
    Perhaps, but the use of the "star" aligned with common usage on other sites to highlight something. And people often talked about "starring" tweets rather than "favoriting" tweets. If anything, it would have made more sense to change it from "favorite" to "star".
  - the_watcher 11y ago
    Sure, when speaking about the formal English language. In terms of social platforms, however, favorite and like have very different connotations. Favorite implies something far less common than a like. Most people think of a favorite as something they'd like to come back to, while no one really pays attention to every thing they've liked on FB or Instagram
    - teaneedz 11y ago
      Yes! Favorite has meaning beyond the literal for anyone who has been online for a few days. I fav to bookmark or give a simple thumbs up. Hearts break that meaning.
  - oneeyedpigeon 11y ago
    In fact, we're looking right now at a site that mixes up the meanings of like and favourite with no apparent problem.
  - richmarr 11y ago
    > The English word "favorite" implies approval every bit as much as "like" does Personally I don't buy this. I'm used to 'favourites' and 'bookmarks' being used interchangably by browsers, which reduces the approval implication of that term... and the heart symbol doesn't mean 'like' to me, it means 'love', so has a higher level of implied approval than in your comparison.
- jghn 11y ago
  I've generally seen "favorite" to mean "I don't disagree with you per se but I'm not going to reply"
gjreda 11y ago
There are a few services that work with Twitter to do this - Pocket comes to mind. I know their Chrome extension will place "Pocket" buttons on each tweet allowing you to save them for later. Similarly, a long button press on iOS will allow you to send a link from within Twitter to Pocket.
sp332 11y ago
I'd been using the Favorite as a Like/Heart already. I wonder how many people were using it as a bookmark.
- stevesearer 11y ago
  A lot of people use it as a way to get your attention without retweeting the post to their feed. I've started getting an increase in what seems to be automated favoriting (now liking), which is so incredibly annoying that I have to end up muting those users.
- Splendor 11y ago
  When I first joined twitter I assumed that "favorites" were bookmarks and didn't realize that twitter notified users when you favorited a tweet.
- jonlucc 11y ago
  It's interesting to me because Facebook just made the news recently for saying they'd try to come up with something akin to dislike because the "like" is too positive a sentiment for many situations (death of a relative, bad day at work, whatever). In the wake of that, Twitter didn't say "well the favorite is already neutral of emotions, and is more akin to showing support for the thing, positive or negative". Instead, they said "oooh, we want the problem Facebook is facing".
- hokkos 11y ago
  Lot of people used it as "shit user said"
liotier 11y ago
I'll keep using it as a bookmark anyway...
deleted 11y ago
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mbesto 11y ago
I'd argue most people were using it as a "like" anyway.
agumonkey 11y ago
I just woke up, and seeing the new page threw me off. It does completely change the sentiment, and evoke a completely different set of idea to see tiny hearts rather than generic impersonal 'fav'icons.
DanBC 11y ago
I'd rather they just gave me a better search of what's been on my timeline.
zallarak 11y ago
I disagree. It is wholly insignificant in the grand scheme of things. Twitter can't be fixed by putting so much thought into an icon - the core engagement of it is slightly broken. Chris Sacca had a great article on what is wrong with Twitter [1]. TLDR: changing stars to hearts won't move then needle. The fact that they devoted an entire blog post to it makes me feel like they're headed in the wrong direction. [1]: http://lowercasecapital.com/2015/06/03/what-twitter-can-be-2/ http://lowercasecapital.com/2015/06/03/what-twitter-can-be-2...
InclinedPlane 11y ago
That's already been the way people have been using the favstar on twitter. The difference now is that it'll be obvious to more people that this is the main purpose of the feature. That plus now it'll be slightly different if you want to "favorite" something that is negative (the "like" problem).

deleted 11y ago

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atomi 11y ago

Yeah that's great just as long as the API calls dont change.

deleted 11y ago
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miradu 11y ago
no API changes: https://blog.twitter.com/2015/hearts-for-developers https://blog.twitter.com/2015/hearts-for-developers

egusa 11y ago

I think its a good idea, but the "like" to me feels too much like Facebook.

agentgt 11y ago

I am sort of tired of the ole lets make it emotional to make it stick [1] tactic. Of course this is just my opinion but I sort of liked how Twitter was more newsy and less friendsy. I would even prefer the star to be a bookmark but I suppose it doesn't scale down well (size wise). [1]: http://www.engineerguy.com/white-papers/made-to-stick.htm http://www.engineerguy.com/white-papers/made-to-stick.htm (see chapter 5)

midgetjones 11y ago

If you click the link to the twitter username at the top of that article, you get to a page which still shows the favourites star rather than the full twitter feed with hearts https://twitter.com/intent/user?screen_name=akik https://twitter.com/intent/user?screen_name=akik

r3bl 11y ago

> 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. Wow. Really?

pilif 11y ago
Honestly, it was for me when I started with twitter for real in 2010 (my account is from 2006, but I haven't really used it until 2010). It was unclear to me whether I should be using this as a kind of bookmark-feature as a help for me to remember tweets to get back to or whether this was a social signal I'd be sending to the author of the tweet. The would make that much more clear to me, though of course, I have since learned how to use twitter properly (I hope).
- ZanyProgrammer 11y ago
  I'm surprised people associate stars with bookmarks (people still bookmark websites?) rather than a seal of approval.
  - jakeway 11y ago
    Both Chrome and Firefox use a star icon as a shortcut to bookmark a page. I find it more surprising that you don't think people still bookmark websites. What do you use to remember links to pages you might want to visit again in the future?
    - devit 11y ago
      You can often type some text that you remember from the URL or title in the URL bar and browsers will search the history and present you a set of pages you visited including the one you want. Effectively it's like bookmarking everything and then using the keyboard to navigate among the bookmarks. Normal bookmarks are still necessary if you need to record a set of multiple pages that meet some criteria.
      - 11y ago

jscheel 11y ago

In the past, I used stars as bookmarking. However, I noticed a shift towards more "like" behavior about 1-2 years ago amongst my twitter network.

josu 11y ago
More than a like, I understand it as a "I acknowledge your response, but I have nothing to add. Have a good day!"
r3bl 11y ago
From my experience, favorite seemed to be used more as an "interesting, but not interesting enough to pass it on to other people" button.
praseodym 11y ago
In the past, Twitter didn't send notifications to anyone about what you favorited. They do now, which is weird when trying to use it as a bookmarking tool.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

draw_down 11y ago

Wow, I am already sick of hearing about this. Star -> heart. Got it.

dpeck 11y ago

I don' believe that the wording could be more condescending if they tried to make it that way.

hk__2 11y ago

I assume that’s in line with them adding the birthday field on user profiles. People used to Facebook will like more tweets than with the previous star/favorite system and thus provide more accurate data for ads.

stevewillows 11y ago

I've always viewed and used hearts / stars / likes as a way of saying 'I have nothing else to add to this conversation.'

Amorymeltzer 11y ago
Indeed. One of my main uses for emoji is the thumbs-up/heart/etc., likewise signalling "Over-and-out." And yes, I realize that, technically, "over-and-out" is incorrect, it should be just "out".
jonlucc 11y ago
Sort of an upvote on that platform; same here.

tildlyo 11y ago

Favourite was the generic thing for acknowledging a post whether you like it, relate to it, or whatever...so now if someone has bad news (eg. someone dies) what do you do? 'like it'?

moron4hire 11y ago
So previously you were saying them dying was your favorite thing. I don't get how this is different.

fideloper 11y ago

My assumption on any changes Twitter makes is that it's powered by the hope of future ad revenue. I see that potential for ads in Moments. I would guess Hearts will get tweaked in the future to behave in a way that will make them something of value to brands (at least, Twitter hopes). Similar to brands spending money for Facebook Likes (and thus getting their logos in people's feeds), I see Hearts as a first move towards a similar feature/concept. Personally I like this change (as it is now) because I've only ever used stars as a "like" button, knowing people on the other end see that in their timeline. It's a very useful social tool for acknowledgement.

Grue3 11y ago

So now it's like Tumblr. Now they only need to remove 140-character limit and there will be no differences at all. "The heart, in contrast, is a universal symbol that resonates across languages, cultures, and time zones." I don't really buy it. Many countries have stars in their flags/coats of arms. There's no such unified symbolism for hearts. For example Chinese pictogram for heart is 心.

omni 11y ago
> Many countries have stars in their flags/coats of arms. And the meaning of stars on flags is definitely not "this is something I really like." It's not a clear symbol of anything.
- nationcrafting 11y ago
  It'd be surreal if the stars on their flags were bookmarks.
nosuchthing 11y ago
UI/UX design. Native external media integration. Twitter does a weird thing where they crop the top and bottom of photos, requiring you to click it to see more of the image. For 140 character posts, somehow the twitter design has ended up as an cumbersome and cluttered webpage. Interesting to think about how similar Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, and Ello are. Knowing how easily any user base can jump ship if one starts to go down, others are ready to pick up the deserters in a heartbeat.
chillacy 11y ago
If there's anything anthropology has taught us, it's that the claim "X is a universal symbol that resonates across languages, cultures, and time zones" is almost certainly not the case. There are languages without nouns, languages with only two colors, languages with no tenses to differentiate time, etc. Maybe twitter meant "it's a universal symbol that resonates across cultures which derive from the european middle ages" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heart_(symbol) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heart_(symbol)

chuckgreenman 11y ago

TLDR + Sarcasm: "Today we made twitter a little bit more like facebook, because lets face it, some people are confused by stars and the word favorite."

dombili 11y ago

I'm glad they're focusing on fixing major problems such as newcomers finding the functionality of the favorite button confusing, instead of trying to find new ways to deal with abuse on Twitter.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

tdkl 11y ago

I don't use Twitter, but this sounds more confusing now. Stars are used throughout other services or systems for favoriting something such as bookmarks and if I "star it", I can revisit it in the future. But that means only I can see it. Hearts on Instagram are broadcasted to my followers, Facebook likes as well. Is this also the case on Twitter now? There's a difference between saving something for personal recollection and also broadcasting it.

deleted 11y ago
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jonknee 11y ago
You could previously view people's favorites. Example: https://twitter.com/gruber/favorites https://twitter.com/gruber/favorites

mschuster91 11y ago

Not long before Twitter will blend in with Failbook and Instagram. A pity, but apparently neccessary as Twitter needs fresh cash. The problem: the money is in the high-active users, not in the noobs using Twitter for an hour and then moving along. And a significant chunk of said high-active users will depart from Twitter because, like FB, the users haven't been consulted in any way... edit: If Twitter REALLY wanted to improve its experience, it should... 1) fix tab-navigation to work like text->submitbutton, not text->media->navigation->poll->submitbutton 2) only auto-complete with tab when the current word begins with an @. No, if I just type "example"<tab> I DO NOT want a random user with "example" in the name expanded. 3) in the Android app, when I'm scrolling 2h behind and rt'ing a kitten image, I DO NOT want to jump right to the top and have to scroll aaaallll the way down again.

chinathrow 11y ago

I've seen them testing this and the icon style changes for months now, having had three different test screens spread over three different accounts. On mobile.

mathgeek 11y ago

The trend continues towards "everyone looks like Facebook:" http://readwrite.com/2014/06/04/social-networks-all-look-alike http://readwrite.com/2014/06/04/social-networks-all-look-ali...

armandososa 11y ago

I'm bummed. I used stars as a "save-for-later" feature. I like the idea of having the option to explicitly endorse something you like, but I will miss the bookmark functionality. Even Facebook has a "save" feature (a little hidden in a menu, but that's ok for me) and they seem to use it effectively for engagement purposes. I think Twitter is missing an opportunity here.

moron4hire 11y ago
It's literally just a change of icon. You may continue to use it exactly as you were using it before.
- codezero 11y ago
  If it were that simple, they wouldn't write a post about their justification for choosing a heart over a star, and changing it from favorite to like. They expect the underlying behavior/use to change, or they wouldn't have bothered making such a significant change to a core feature. This would be like changing Retweet to Share.
  - ablation 11y ago
    But is that stopping YOU from behaving like that if you know it's literally just a change of icon? And if the change of icon bothers people that much, just install Tweetdeck. It's still a star in there (much like other inconsistencies across Twitter's apps/platforms).
    - codezero 11y ago
      Yes, it's likely to change my behavior because the change is so visible it makes me think about it, and the best interaction is one I don't have to think about. Twitter has asked developers to update their apps to reflect the change, if you don't your app will be blocked, so, there's that.
      - deleted 11y ago

codezero 11y ago

A heart conveys much more emotion than "like" or "favorite" – it's just an emoji, but still, it seems significant enough to me that I'll do less liking on Twitter. Like also carries a connotation over from Facebook – liking a page on Facebook attaches it to my profile, and potentially feeds me content based on that, will this happen on Twitter? I can't assume it won't.

frostmatthew 11y ago
> liking a page on Facebook attaches it to my profile, and potentially feeds me content based on that, will this happen on Twitter? I can't assume it won't. Your favorites/likes have always been visible to other users. e.g. here are the likes of the Twitter account in your HN profile https://twitter.com/radiofreejohn/favorites https://twitter.com/radiofreejohn/favorites (interesting they've changed the text in the profiles to likes but the URL is still favorites). [Perhaps I'm misunderstanding "will this happen on Twitter" and you're referring to someday filtering feeds...if that were to ever happen I imagine they would use this data regardless of what they call it]
- codezero 11y ago
  Being visible and being a persistent measure of preference is different. Twitter is very ephemeral and my worry is that this will imply less ephemerality. It's an irrational worry.

moron4hire 11y ago

If nobody had said anything, I would have never noticed the change. People are complaining and/or celebrating this change over some notion that it changes what the action "says". For people who agree that it changes what you are saying, they seem to universally agree it's changing from "I bookmarked this" to "I endorse this". Here's the thing: if they weren't meant as endorsements before, then why was the list of them public, and why were they called "favorites"? Since when does publicly marking something as a "favorite" translate to a neutral "I am expressing no opinion on this matter, merely marking it for later retrieval"? Because I can guarantee you: whenever you star/favorite/like/whatever-the-hell-we're-calling-it-today a tweet/post/blog/picture/whatever-site-we're-on-today in a public way with notification back to the original poster, it always gets interpreted as interest/enjoyment/endorsement. It's literally nothing more than changing the icon. Same button, different color. It does the same thing: make a public notice that you touched that button on that tweet. If you weren't using it for what it was meant for before, you can continue to use it against what it's meant for today. You all are literally bike-shedding right now.

xjay 11y ago

Twitter has some dual personality when it comes to UX. Recently, Twitter quietly started relying on the HTTP Referrer field. That's OK, I guess, except they did nothing to inform their users about it, which is easy for them to check and report on specifically. Instead, they let their users get confused by generic messages when attempting to post, or change settings, trying all sorts of things. If you want to require HTTP referrer, you should know what that means, and why many may have it disabled. It's also interesting to see the social media sites and the web converging on using the same types of icons. All because of the mobile platform and a certain apple OS, with the cog wheel and menu symbol. Heart versus star: I think the heart miscommunicates the function. I can't identify with it anymore, as I don't tend to "heart things". Also, they didn't just change the icon, they changed the color as well. The star was a weak yellow. The heart is a darker, burning red, and therefore sticks out more in contrast with the white.

adsche 11y ago
> Recently, Twitter quietly started relying on the HTTP Referrer field. Yes! It took me weeks to figure that one out. In three years without Referer that was only my second non-obvious error caused by that. And then they started with the polls. You can create polls from twitter web, but you cannot answer one. You just see a tweet from somebody asking a question. Nothing else, no way to even see that it is a poll. Same in tweetdeck (which is also by twitter). Confusing strategy, at least for me.
- _jomo 11y ago
  > You can create polls from twitter web, but you cannot answer one. AFAIK this is only a bug with FirefoxDev & IndexedDB. It should work in other browsers or in private mode, where IndexedDB is disabled.

iconjack 11y ago

From the post: "The heart is more expressive, enabling you to convey a range of emotions and easily connect with people." It's still just one bit, right? How does it enable conveying a range of emotions?

betenoire 11y ago
context provides the other bits. 'hearting' a baby announcement is not the same as 'hearting' a funny meme.
- kenko 11y ago
  Right, but since the context hasn't changed, they haven't increased the range of things you can convey in a given context, they've just changed what it conveys.
  - jsprogrammer 11y ago
    They have made claims about what it conveys. Bottom line is that it's just a button that notifies the other person that you pushed it.
- lifeformed 11y ago
  and now you can finally 'heart' the latest atrocity!
samskeller 11y ago
This was the dumbest part of the post, I thought. They just changed its name... how does this make it easier to connect with people?
saint_fiasco 11y ago
If anything, having it convey more stuff is a bad thing, because it increases ambiguity.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

oldmanjay 11y ago

That's a heck of a lot of words for a tiny semantically void change. A more cynical me would assume a whole bunch of product people at twitter are well familiar with justifying their job in the face of obvious uselessness.

Uhhrrr 11y ago
Seems like a "New Coke"-type publicity stunt, doesn't it?

soyiuz 11y ago

Twitter lost the plot. Oh look, riots in Istabul. Four people injured. I guess I'd better heart that one. Because I love violence... What is the storyline here? Many people use Twitter for live coverage of events, to organize protests, and to keep up with professional news. How does a heart fit into these use cases??

hackaflocka 11y ago
You're right... but even "favorites" means something similar to a lot of people (instead of what it means to most of us who've been long-time users of the internet -- "bookmarks"). I agree that this is going to be an issue going forward.
- soyiuz 11y ago
  Yes, but at least "favorites" were somewhat more neutral. They still prevented me from "favoriting" negative news, as it felt like an endorsement. Hearts work well for things like family photos and cats--the traditional strengths of Facebook. But Twitter's point of differentiation was always live, rapidly developing news. Conferences. Sharp commentary. Leaks. Announcements. A heart is just not the right symbol in these contexts. Going for the broader market risks weakening the core use cases, which set the platform apart in the first place.
  - toomuchtodo 11y ago
    Throw likes and favorites out; use "remember". That's the only reason I like or now, favorite, something on Twitter; it has some significance to me (either positive or negative) that I may want to revisit.
    - teaneedz 11y ago
      I kind of like that idea. Remember can mean so much and fits more use cases.
  - hackaflocka 11y ago

staunch 11y ago

Another useless change. If you want to try out something that makes Twitter far more usable, try removing retweets. 1. Install uBlock Origin. 2. My Filters add: http://twitter.com http://twitter.com ## .tweet[data-retweeter] 3. Enjoy a Twitter without retweets.

huac 11y ago
Retweets are great. If you think the people you follow retweet bad stuff, you need to follow better people. edit: I think the converse might be more accurate - if the people you follow retweet bad stuff, then the regular tweets probably aren't good either.
- staunch 11y ago
  Have you tried turning off retweets? It makes @pmarca's feed his actual thoughts instead of a mess of stuff.
- frostmatthew 11y ago
  > If you think the people you follow retweet bad stuff, you need to follow better people. That's not a very good generalization - I have retweets turned off for many accounts I follow, some because I found I was interested in what they tweeted (so I wouldn't want to unfollow them) but less interested in what they retweet, but in most cases it's because I try to keep my feed relatively low-volume and some people are extremely liberal with their retweets so turning off retweets for those accounts keeps my feed more manageable.
- MichaelGG 11y ago
  I tried following good people on Twitter. Even some of the popular users on here, or other highly intelligent and respected people. I cannot think of anyone better to follow. I can't do it. There's so, so much shit. It's a constant storm of random "news" plus attempts at being clever. Retweets amplify this significantly. And then Twitter's web UI make the entire thing unusable. Click an image? Lose your place in a stream. It's an embarrassingly bad UI that seems designed to toss me to locations that are anything but where I was reading.

agumonkey 11y ago

Completely reminds me of http://borislavkiprin.com/2014/01/27/meanings-favorite-retweet/ http://borislavkiprin.com/2014/01/27/meanings-favorite-retwe...

subnaught 11y ago

Translation: Our users don't understand our service, and we don't either, so we'll just try and mimic a successful one.

smtddr 11y ago
That's one translation. Another could be: "Our users are being innovate and using our services in ways we didn't completely anticipate, therefore we are trying to let our products grow "organically" and will make changes that augment what our users appear to be doing." But this is kind of 2 sides of the same coin.
- wldcordeiro 11y ago
  This seems more likely as hashtags and mentions both came from how users were using Twitter, they weren't originally in Twitter.
- malgb 11y ago
  That's just spin. Facebook has picked the right bandwagon so Twitter is jumping on. At the end of the day, it's just a link on a website.
- subnaught 11y ago
  I would be more sympathetic to that explanation if the feature being rolled out was somehow novel or at least adding new functionality. But it's not, it's just removing a small quirk and making the service more like everything else on the internet.
felipeerias 11y ago
It is exactly that. For example, imagine if Facebook made a public page listing all the times that you have ever clicked "like" on something. Weird, right? Twitter just made that.

pmlnr 11y ago

500px has favourites (heart) and like (thumbs up). I believe they are one of the few who understands there's a difference; it's unfortunate that most of the social media doesn't.

the_watcher 11y ago

Starring a tweet always seemed a bit odd to me, except when using it to bookmark something for later. Hearts imply likes, based on other social platforms, which will almost certainly lead to more use. I found myself rarely, if ever, starring tweets, which actually made the function more useful (looking at my favorites is a short list of tweets I wanted to remember).

justizin 11y ago

Two stories about Twitter circulating today: First, The only black manager in product or engineering left after encountering tone-deaf collaboration in measuring and increasing diversity. Second, They changed the star to a heart.

demian 11y ago

I "love" this tweet about how 10 people died on an earthquake last week. It has the same problem as "Like".

corobo 11y ago
As opposed to marking 10 people dying as a favourite? They both imply positive feelings towards the tweet being tagged As mentioned elsewhere if they were trying to get away from the positive connotations "Remember" would be a better name for it
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

homulilly 11y ago

Translation: Our business is failing and we're completely clueless about what to do but we want to look like we're trying so uh here's a new icon.

evv 11y ago

While we're on the subject, can somebody explain the behavioral difference between a star (or heart, whatever) and a retweet? They seem to have nearly the exact same effect

colmvp 11y ago
A retweet means the tweet being retweeted will show up on the feed of people who are following you. Star/Favoriting is just like a personal bookmark. It won't automatically show up on followers feeds.
- benjiweber 11y ago
  They do also show your favourites in your followers feeds at times. I see it quite frequently. Retweets always show up to your followers. Favourites sometimes do. I don't know how they decide to show them in the main feed.
saisi 11y ago
Using Facebook for comparison, a retweet is similar to the 'share' button. Heart parallels the 'like' button. Retweeting explicitly draws your followers' attention to the tweet. While a heart seems to have a multitude of purposes: right from expressing sentiment to bookmarking. Twitter in this case wishes to make it clear to new users that Heart is how they express sentiment. Behaviorally, retweets tend to be expression of public endorsement. While hearts(previously favorites) are a semi-private invocation of approval or interest
jsprogrammer 11y ago
A retweet puts the tweet into your public feed, as if you had tweeted it (of course, in the UI it is correctly attributed to the original author). A favorite/star/heart/like/"the other button", just flags the tweet in your account so that you can refer to it easier later (in another, less public feed).

BHSPitMonkey 11y ago

Hopefully I'm not the only person who spent a good 10 seconds staring at this heart/circle/play-icon hybrid thinking it was supposed to be the new icon being unveiled: http://i.imgur.com/pKCfDmj.png http://i.imgur.com/pKCfDmj.png

findjashua 11y ago

dear twitter, bookmarks & likes are 2 separate things

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

m1 11y ago

For people wanting to revert to the old favourites icon: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/twitter-old-favourite/lkfbecccmniadcbdhkeepdkfekhloinc https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/twitter-old-favour...

oliv__ 11y ago
Well... that was fast!

bovermyer 11y ago

This doesn't really matter to me. What I'm curious about, though, is a far more general question that this brings to mind. How do you build a social network that sustains itself through community rather than advertising dollars? Is that even possible?

jgroszko 11y ago
Wikipedia has a yearly donation drive. I'd be incredibly surprised if Twitter took that path though.
venomsnake 11y ago
Reddit gold is one way. The way linux distros mirrors work show that there are entities willing to provide bandwidth and servers for no return. You could decentralize it and use end users bandwidth and storage to make it cheap to operate. The crucial problem is the onboarding of users. Once you reach critical mass everything else is easy.
- cwyers 11y ago
  > Reddit gold is one way. Reddit seems to spend more than it brings in in a year, if reports that it had $20 million in cash when Conde Nast spun them off and had $18 million in 2013 are true.(1) Reddit also has ads. It doesn't seem like Reddit gold is sufficient to keep a large site afloat. (1) http://allthingsd.com/20130109/reddits-funding-round-is-for-real-and-its-only-for-angels/ http://allthingsd.com/20130109/reddits-funding-round-is-for-...

gukov 11y ago

There was nothing worse than allowing to make tweets viral by gaming people into voting: "retweet if you agree, star if you disagree." Retweeting a tweet makes it infinitely more popular than starring. It does look like twitter has started rolling out a proper polling feature.

tolmasky 11y ago

Twitter should have been bold and merged retweet and favorite into heart. Instead it's now more confusing which you should do. On other social networks hearts are kind of the redispersal mechanism, whereas I think what Twitter wants is more retweets -- more people introducing more people to each other.

n72 11y ago

And to think I was going to buy a heap load of TWTR yesterday!

apricot13 11y ago

I thought they had added hearts along with stars that would have made sense! Stars for bookmarking and hearts for liking/showing appreciation. Stars doesn't send a notification to the poster but a heart does.

vool 11y ago

So my 'like' show up under my 'favorites' Clear as mud ! https://twitter.com/favorites https://twitter.com/favorites oh https://twitter.com/likes https://twitter.com/likes

bingobob 11y ago

I don't want a heart or fav a tweet but there are times i do wanna Bookmark one to read a link later.

InclinedPlane 11y ago
Same functionality.
- bingobob 11y ago
  no every time someone fav/hearts a tweet the creator of that tweet gets a message saying someone loves there tweet, if it was just a bookmark then they wouldn't get this

hack_mmmm 11y ago

Companies like Twitter, Facebook have rolled out (Like/Hearts/emotions) button to posts. I think "heart" button is not appropriate categorization for real time contents. Sometimes we just want to express on things if they are relevant. The emotion part "Like, heart, dislike, chill, etc" is just an aftermath to the real intent. Problem: "heart" can not express emotion that community wants to just share, it may not necessarily be likable. Example, Tweet about violence in Middle east. I want to just not give it a "heart" but some other emotion like "disgrace, shame" etc. Idea: To solve this problem, I would say the real symbol should be "Star", instead of "heart, like" etc. "Star" means you want to buzz in with this article but not classify your emotion. What do you think?

rco8786 11y ago
> To solve this problem, I would say the real symbol should be "Star" Are you ... what?

dkarapetyan 11y ago

This is hilarious. I mean in the absence of actual substantive things to do they are just doing fluffy things. How does this make their developer relations better in any way? Wasn't that something that was supposed to be coming? In the meantime we get a heart instead of a star? I mean what the hell? Are they taking the playbook from yahoo? Maybe they should make their logo more "showy" while they're at it.

dreamdu5t 11y ago

They might as well just announce in a PR that they have no idea what they're doing.

madisonmay 11y ago

Honestly this addition was so seamless I thought it had always been that way. Definitely liked a few things on twitter before I realized what I was doing.

craigvas 11y ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10507474 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10507474