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Twitter Sees 6% Increase in “Like” Activity After First Week of Hearts
- cvburgess 11y agoI never understood the "bookmarking" feature that was favoriting. Hearts/likes/kudos are pretty universally accepted as a way of showing support without having to engage with a comment/response. This was long overdo IMO.
- k__ 11y agoSame here. I often thought "This is a good tweet... but why should I favorite something on Twitter?!"
- cdcarter 11y agoI think the phrase "favorite" was to be read as "things that are my favorite" -- it was never used by the userbase as a bookmarking mechanism.
- jimwalsh 11y agoI think assuming it wasn't used as a bookmarking mechanism is being a bit shortsighted. Myself and many others in my circles used it as a bookmarking tool as well as to show support of something someone said.
- sp332 11y agoA study last year found a 3:1 ratio of people liking vs bookmarking. http://www.cs.nott.ac.uk/~pszmw/pubs/icwsm2014-favouriting.pdf http://www.cs.nott.ac.uk/~pszmw/pubs/icwsm2014-favouriting.p... [PDF]
- atomi 11y agoI use favs/likes with IFTTT to save twitter links to other services.
- leftnode 11y agoIt contains an interesting link you would want to read later? Pinboard can import favorited tweets and automatically store them as unread bookmarks, for example.
- k__ 11y agoWell, I got my own bookmarks for that :\
- vox_mollis 11y agoWhat, then, is your workflow for when you are reading through tweets, see someone you follow/respect post a url to an interesting article you'd like to read later? Or perhaps post a quote you'd like to use later? Copy/paste the url into another tab, then bookmark it? Favoriting tweets for later review is a substantially more convenient workflow.
- ThomPete 11y agoTo be honest i click the article and instagram or pocket that instead of the tweet. I used favorite for things I liked.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- sjs382 11y ago> Favoriting tweets for later review is a substantially more convenient workflow. So, you favorite it, read the article later and then unfavorite? If you don't unfavorite, how do you differentiate between a bunch of links int he past week that you may/may not have read? If I want to read something later, I add it to my "Read It Later" service of choice: Pocket.
- smackfu 11y agoPractically, I haven't had a problem. I remember there was an article I wanted to read, I go to my list of favorited tweets, and I find it. Dedicated read-it-later services just end up being a list of articles I haven't read and feel bad about.
- sjs382 11y ago> Dedicated read-it-later services just end up being a list of articles I haven't read and feel bad about. It used to be for me, too. Now I'm much more loose about marking something as read without reading it.
- rorosaurus 11y ago
- teaneedz 11y agoThe problem is that favoriting has historically been associated with bookmarking. It is never really taken in the literal sense of the word online. Hearts/Likes does not work in so many situations. I won't heart something that is negative, but would have fav'd it as a bookmark. Heart/likes is only a marketing solution to go after new users. It's not the power users tool.
- wassago 11y agoWell, not like it's a surprise, they've A/B tested it, saw increase in CTR, implemented.
- smpetrey 11y agoI always understood "favoriting" to be like "saving" a post in reddit. However, the digestabilibty of tweets are pretty much instantaneous so "saving" them is without merit. So I understood the genesis of "hearting" or "liking" to be very much so a re-branding of a highly adopted UI. Was this move organized before @jack came back to Twitter?
- wdmeldon 11y agoThat's assuming the tweet is only text. I had used it to quickly bookmark links within tweets, but opening them and saving them to Instapaper honestly works better.
- n0us 11y agoI actually come back to a lot of saved Reddit posts, particularly ones on programming subreddits where I can't easily read the article or mess with the code on my phone.
- taejo 11y agoThat's the point - a Reddit post can be much more substantial than a tweet usually is, so saving makes more sense for the former than the latter.
- InAnEmergency 11y agoThey were testing as far back as June, but probably even earlier: http://mashable.com/2015/06/17/twitter-favorite-hearts-stars/#ZzNQVb56RSqT http://mashable.com/2015/06/17/twitter-favorite-hearts-stars...
- pheroden 11y agoWell, that, and the fact that you have a huge number of people that are going to try it for a bit, and then forget about it. I'd like to see the numbers over the next six months.
- vsbuffalo 11y agoThis isn't the most useful statistical figure. The heart feature is novel — the increase could be due entirely to folks trying it out. A more meaningful figure would be to look at the folks who have constant favoriting habits (with stars that is) and see how their behavior changed. Personally, I'm more reluctant to heart tweets, as my Twitter account is mostly professional and it feels a bit unprofessional to "heart" a colleague's tweet.
- minimaxir 11y ago"6% increase in likes" can mean a few things in the statistical sense. * 6% increase compared to the same time last year? * 6% increase in WoW favorite/like activity? * 6% increase in the probability that a given user will favorite/tweet a given tweet? Granted, in all cases, 6% is a lot at Twitter's scale, although depending on the metric used, it may not be proof that the change is unequivocally better.
- kosievdmerwe 11y agoOr the most likely meaning: In the AB test, the group with the heart had 6% more likes/favorites than the control group.
- andyl 11y agoWow - that's pretty exciting. Great to see that Twitter is innovating again.
- theklub 11y agoThey are solving the worlds problems. Where would we be without them?
- oldmanjay 11y agoThis was literally just a reskin. I'm all for Twitter succeeding, but classifying this as an innovation stretches the term til it snaps.
- lifeformed 11y agoI read andyl's comment as one laced with extreme sarcasm.
- scintill76 11y agoIt was probably a joke on the often-expressed opinions that Twitter doesn't know what they're doing and doesn't innovate.
- rezashirazian 11y agoI'm not sure but do I sense a bit of sarcasm in your tone?
- tallerholler 11y agoTruly inspiring... (ok I'm being sarcastic)
- Blaaguuu 11y agoI would assume that a good chunk of that initial increased activity has less to do with it being a better name/icon, and more to do with the increased awareness/attention to the feature in general, due to all of the press around the change... Will be more interesting to see the % of new users that make use of it after a few months.
- Shog9 11y agoA week in, could easily be attributed to the Hawthorne effect; [0] if the trend continues after a month or longer, might be worth talking about. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawthorne_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawthorne_effect
- 5outh 11y agoNot sure if this is related to the Hawthorne effect, but I could easily see more traffic with liking just due to the fact that it's new and fancy. Maybe a significant number of people noticed the change and clicked the heart a few times just for fun.
- mmahemoff 11y agoYes, would be interesting to see a comparison of new Twitter users before and after. Not that they only care about new users, but the data would be more pure at this stage. It's promising anyway, considering the number of people who were internet-outraged at the time.
- ThomPete 11y agoNot sure the Hawthorne effect can be used here although I understand what you mean. Most probably it's more just simply the news media effect. And yes you are right, it's going to be more interesting if this stays up.
- Plough_Jogger 11y agoI agree with your assertion that the increase is at least in part due to the fact that the feature is new, but I think this would more aptly be classified as the novelty effect. [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novelty_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novelty_effect
- Shog9 11y agoYeah, possibly. I saw an awful lot of favoriting immediately after the introduction seemingly meant as sort of a commentary on the change itself - explicitly favoriting to show support for favoriting. But either way, interesting to see if the trend continues.
- tyre 11y ago> The reason? According to Weil, “It’s easier to understand.” We aren't comparing apples to apples. It is a different button with different meaning. The barrier to my "liking" something is substantially lower than my "favoriting" it. I understand both, but I'll do more of one than another. The real question is what the goal is and whether user are getting more value from more likes versus fewer favorites. Are my interactions 6% more engaging? Does the quantity of interactions cover the decrease in quality of meaning? Subjectively, I don't feel like it. Favorites had more meaning to me than Facebook likes precisely because there was a higher bar. They've diluted the meaning of a term and are, unsurprisingly, seeing people use it more often.
- __abc 11y agoAm I the only person who hasn't changed how I use that button?? It's what I use to "mark" a tweet so I can easily come back and either read/refer to it later.
- dpeck 11y agoI think that approach to using the button fell out of favor a while ago. That is definitely how I used Twitter in the past, but now its more of a "read this, enjoyed it, didn't feel need to respond further"
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- voyou 11y agoNot, you're not the only person who uses it the same way. Indeed, it's incomprehensible to me that people would intentionally change how they use something that they know is functionally identical just because it has a different image and word associated with it. I can see how the change might have a more subtle, subconscious influence over the long term.
- gjm11 11y agoSuppose they renamed it to "Hate" and made the icon a skull or something, but kept the functionality the same. I bet you (and others) would use it differently, not only because of the psychological difference for you but also because of the difference in how other people will likely react to "voyou Hated this" rather than "voyou Liked this". "Like" versus "Favorite" is a much smaller change, of course, as is "heart" versus "star" -- but they're still changes. Why shouldn't they have an effect?
- tolmasky 11y agoI want to know if it is at the expense of retweets. I'll say what I thought before: Like vs. Retweet is now confusing (and I think detrimental to what Twitter probably wants which is retweets since those increase engagement). They should have renamed Retweet to like (people on other social networks expect likes to show up on their friend's feeds), and either dropped favorite altogether --or-- just make it a little bookmark icon! Like/Bookmark makes way more sense to me than Retweet/Like.
- pearlsteinj 11y agoI'd be interested to see if this is just because it's new and novel or because of some sort of human psychological difference. The latter would be really interesting.
- djtriptych 11y agoI believe it's the latter, but there is no way I'm discussing that viewpoint in here.
- codva 11y agoI clicked a few just to see the animation. If a lot of people did that there is your 6%.
- yrochat 11y agoI clicked much more than one time (just to see the animation).
- jacquesm 11y agoI'm happy for them but I fail to see how a '6% increase in like activity' will change the financial situation for twitter in any meaningful way, assuming that this is not just a momentary up-tick (which is fairly common after any change).
- encoderer 11y agoIncreasing engagement of new users makes Twitter more sticky? They don't have a financial problem as much as a growth problem. Ultimately, six percent is a significant movement and it's certainly not a bad thing for the company.
- SandB0x 11y ago> Increasing engagement of new users makes Twitter more sticky "Engagement" seems to be one of those alternative metrics that companies point to when they're not making actual money.
- encoderer 11y agoI think you're being a little cynical. On boarding a user is not mystical. You need them to begin using your product. And as they continue to use the product they develop habits. No use? No habit. That use is called engagement. It's not a marketing term, it's a product term that's used in marketing.
- mrmondo 11y agoCorrelation != Causation. It's a highly visible change - users will be testing it out and in many cases it seems - making fun of it. In my opinion the main (not only) reason it feels familiar to people is because of Facebook. Since when was it easier to understand the use of symbol for 'love' towards 140 characters of text than use the symbol for 'favourite'?
- enginnr 11y agoI've yet to see heart/fave/star/like buttons being context aware. I've heard anything from people using these mechanisms to read articles later, to using them as attention grabbing devices used to steal eyeball hours from distracted phone users, and everything in between. "Like" activity is a misleading metric and could mean anything because it's stripped and devoid of context.
- aerovistae 11y agois this really news? I find this an embarrassing headline to top this site. "Social Network X changes wording/icon on link, sees change of a few percent in some direction over the course of a week, trend may change direction at any time, we'll keep you posted" DON'T CHANGE THAT CHANNEL!!
- gchokov 11y agoEpic nonsense.
- tallerholler 11y agocompletely agree
- yueq 11y agoHuge gain. But didn't they A/B test this before?
- robertp 11y ago6% is pathetic increase and stronger sign how little people engage on the platform. The engagement ratio of Instagram to Twitter is several orders of magnitude off. You look are Redbull on both platforms. Twitter they have average of 40 retweets and 150 likes/faves, plus some replies. Instagram they have 50-80k likes and 100 to 1k comments. Even if twitter had 1000% increase that would not help the platform where there is so little active engagement.
- kosievdmerwe 11y ago6% is a pretty substantial increase for just changing the icon and name of the action. Hell it's a pretty substantial change in general for a feature that is presented so prominently. Either way, how do you propose Twitter gets to Instagram volumes other than through lots of incremental changes? Instagram didn't get where it is today in one fell swoop.
- 27182818284 11y ago>in one fell swoop. Not all the way, but a team of 13 did pretty darn well in just two years--enough that it then caused Facebook to make an offer
- hagbardgroup 11y agoCould also be that it's easier to bot Instagram.
- jonknee 11y agoComparing Redbull on both platforms is pretty meaningless. There are other users who have way more followers/interaction on Twitter. Redbull has a brand that fits nicely with Instagram (photos of extreme athletes), while something like @BreakingNews makes tons more sense on Twitter.
- nsgi 11y agoThey also post a few times a day on Twitter vs about daily on Instagram, so the interactions are split between more posts. Other users post many more times a day (most likely because they are posting text rather than photos/videos), so they have more posts to compete with.
- krisdol 11y ago6% increase compared how? Week-over-week? Daily average? Gross average? How much does it fluctuate each week? How likely is a 6% difference on any other week? Has this been adjusted for variance? I see nothing in this article other than two overly-verbose paragraphs summarizing a couple of tweets.
- wnevets 11y ago> The reason? According to Weil, “It’s easier to understand.” or people just a new icon and wanted to see what it did.
- cft 11y agoTime to buy their stock!
- chrisra 11y agoBecause people wanted to watch the little confetti splash, or observe the UI break when clicking the heart too fast. :)
- dreamdu5t 11y agoGet a fucking life. All of you. Who fucking cares!?
- dsschnau 11y agothat heart animation is flippin' cute, thats why
- mesozoic 11y agoTwitter just wishes they had a nickel for every like.
- darka 11y agoI'm surprised, I'm sure the number of likes would fall on Facebook if they switched to using hearts. People seem to have a personal/emotional attachment to the heart symbol, which makes it suitable for social networks like Instagram, because you can love a picture! But a Donald Trump status? Not so much.
- ebbv 11y agoThat seems extremely low given the hype and attention this change got.
- tedd4u 11y agoI think success is probably better measured by the number of UUs receiving and or giving likes than the sheer number of likes given. Still more is better all other things equal.
- thisisrobv 11y agoThis seems potentially misleading without proper context, like... were "favorites" growing before, if so at what rate?
- cechner 11y agoI probably fit into the camp of people who would 'like' but not 'favourite'. BUT I am not a regular twitter user so perhaps my POV isn't that usual. I think of 'favouriting' something as a kind of bookmark that I might want to go back to some time. I know that's now how you use twitter, but this definitely coloured my opinion.
- TazeTSchnitzel 11y agoI think stars were good because they were vague. They had various meanings: some used them like "likes", some used them as bookmarks, some used them almost to acknowledge receipt, some used them to express empathy, some used some combination of these (like me). "Like" is much narrower. It's also at odds with its own symbol, ️<3 (goddamnit HN please stop stripping emoji), which means "love", a more intense emotion with different connotations.
- mcs 11y agothe "love" button wasn't supposed to be "like"
- sakopov 11y agoI'm sure a lot of folks will disagree with me but as someone who doesn't use twitter i find this absolutely delusional. Even if you do use twitter I can't imagine the perceived importance of this and all the media traction didn't get at least a chuckle out of you.
- module17 11y agoSex sells.
- aianus 11y agoI don't know what took them so long. Anecdotally I used to get more engagement on my tweets via the cross-post on Facebook than I did on Twitter. The kicker -- I was working at Twitter and the people liking them on Facebook but not faving them on Twitter also worked at Twitter (!)
- Pxtl 11y agoWhen I first saw the twitter favourite feature, I'd assumed it was a "save this tweet to review later for your list of favourites" since that's how the term is used on other platforms. I quickly learned otherwise, but it is definitely simpler if they just stick to existing conventions.
- ericdykstra 11y agoA major part of the Twitter ad pricing formula includes "engagements" If they can get more people to "engage" by clicking a heart instead of a star, it's more revenue for them, even if it doesn't improve user experience at all. Of course, there's a good chance the market for Twitter ads will correct, and value an engagement lower if the new engagements don't lead to sales or click-throughs or whatever metric.