6 ms·

> 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 barri

by 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 ago
Am 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 ago
  I 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 ago
  Not, 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 ago
    Suppose 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?
  - Retra 11y ago
    Why would anyone change something if it wasn't supposed to have any effect?
  - drumdance 11y ago
    Most people don't follow stuff like this very closely. Does the average person actually know it's functionally identical? I might not if I hadn't read about it here, at least not right away. If nothing else I would like something just to see what happens.
    - derefr 11y ago
      Most people don't realize that Liking on Tumblr bookmarks things in a list (a public list, unless you disable it!) either. Or that liking a conversation on Facebook causes you to follow it (people usually think you have to comment; "commenting to follow" is a very common phrase.) Over time, social media platforms have effectively converged on the same basic set of verbs, with each verb doing everything all its parents did. But people still think of the verb as being the same one the platform started with, and limit their use to that use-case. I think it can be smart to switch from a "dialect" verb signifies to a "common loan-word" one, precisely to get people to take notice that the verb really has done more than they thought for a while now.
- prawn 11y ago
  I also use it to acknowledge a tweet that I don't want to reply to or RT.
  - freehunter 11y ago
    That's what I do. I don't care what the button says, it's a positive acknowledgment of the post and that's how I use it. It's trickier with Facebook, and it might be the same with Twitter if I used it for personal interactions, because on Facebook I see a lot of "my family member died" and 'like' is not entirely appropriate for that.
- myth_buster 11y ago
  I read that Marc Andreessen used favorites the same way to let the people who tweeted to him know that he read their tweets or check their product page etc. The side effect of this behavior was that it sent a signal to the community that "Marc Andreessen" "Favorited" this page/product/tweet which could have surprising effect. I was at a receiving end of this and it brought a hoard of viewership/followers/favorites.
- baddox 11y ago
  That's interesting. I never thought of it like that. In fact, I didn't even know there was a simple way to see all your past favorites.
- ajdlinux 11y ago
  I haven't changed how I use that button... I'd always used it as if it were "like", as do most Twitter users I know.
- NamTaf 11y ago
  You've just described the difference between the two for me. Favouriting a tweet implied that I wanted to reference back to it later, whereas liking a tweet to me conveys that I don't really care to come back to it later but I want to show my appreciation for it without retweeting it.
slouch 11y ago
They've only "diluted the meaning" if what they designed was different than facebook likes. Perhaps they just blew their chance to name the feature initially, and this is the correction.
sjs382 11y ago
> I understand both, but I'll do more of one than another. But until I read the rest of your post, I wasn't sure which one you'd be using more.
prawn 11y ago
I haven't noticed a difference, but I think it was a change they needed to make. Most tweets feel like they go nowhere and get nothing. For the average user, that can really impact the experience compared to an app like Instagram where they're bound to get a handful of encouraging responses. But if Twitter have any sense, they'll do a lot more to encourage the feeling that a tweet has accomplished something, been seen by people, achieved something in the world.
- goostavos 11y ago
  I certainly noticed a difference in the frequency in which I 'like' things now. I find the animation really satisfying : ) It's like a little firework when you click the button.
  - Pxtl 11y ago
    I'm actually disappointed the other twitter verbs don't have a slick anim like that now.
- alttab 11y ago
  This. This. This. Instagram is killing twitter when it comes to short-form public social profiles. Depending on the hash tags, you will get likes instantly for your photos. The narcissism and instant gratification can be very addicting. With twitter, you either need a re-tweet, or a "favorite," which clearly doesn't work well because no one wants to "bookmark" tweets. To me this looks like an attempt to grab some of the "slacktivism" clicking that Instagram and Facebook provide by copying the metaphor with the lower barrier to entry. To the newest kids on the block (in the literal sense), Twitter could position itself as "Instagram for Text." If that makes any sense, and it catches traction, you could see instagram responding by allowing posts without pictures, etc. The closer these networks get to each other with form and function, the fiercer the fight could be. Which in Twitter's case is a good thing because they've been losing.
  - prawn 11y ago
    At one point, they added the ability to see "Tweet Activity" but that could well have worked against them. Prior to tweet activity being visible, I assumed the majority of my followers saw each tweet. But even a tweet with miletone news and a few favourites shows that the tweet was seen by about a sixth of my followers - that's dismal. All that does for me is increase the feeling that tweeting is near-worthless. They need to make the time and social cost of interacting with a tweet as low as possible. Even something that's "less" than a heart. Always thought Instagram could do this by allowing liking where the identity of your like wasn't visible to anyone.
doneata 11y ago
> The real question is what the goal is and whether user are getting more value from more likes versus fewer favorites. I agree; the goal should be indeed improving the net positive contributions to people’s lives. I was happy to find out that there is some work directed at designing products for human values; see Tristan Harris's project, "Time Well Spent": http://timewellspent.io http://timewellspent.io
InclinedPlane 11y ago
Or.... maybe the publicity from the change drew more people's attention to it. If they'd changed it to a moon instead of a star, maybe we'd see the same increase just due to people talking about it so much.
hellbanner 11y ago
I was unable to "favorite" videos on youtube for a few months when they switched to the "thumbs up" for "liking" a video... took me a while to figure it out :/
phoboslab 11y ago
A few years ago we build a website that had a ranking algorithm somewhat similar to reddit. Upvoting a post would put in your favorites. Many users told us that oftentimes they wanted to upvotes a post without putting it in their favs, so we split the behavior and introduced a new fav button in addition to the upvote button. This worked out remarkably well. People voted more without fear of polluting their favs. The overal ranking of posts worked way better with that. I don't think that makes sense for twitter though, because "popular tweets" are not really substantial for the platform - and I actually like that about twitter. It's not so much a popularity contest as platforms are. So, without the need for a strong ranking, I'm not sure if more likes are actually a good outcome. What do we gain from this, other than making it harder to find your (truly) favorite tweets again?
- maxerickson 11y ago
  The upvote buttons on HN add the item to save lists (available in your own profile). There is apparently some demand for separating it out as you say.
pbreit 11y ago
I suspect much of the increase is simple related to it being in the news, not that it is somehow "better".
- dvanduzer 11y ago
  It will be nice to see the long term data. But I don't think being in the news has anything to do with it. Nobody who wasn't using Twitter before suddenly heard the announcement and went "Hearts? Finally! I fucking hate stars!" Twitter's a global media platform, so it's hard to tell when the tail is wagging the dog. Unfortunately, the article doesn't explain that it's a 6% increase in this specific activity relative to all the other activity they track. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
  - Zancarius 11y ago
    Speaking as one data point, for myself, "favoriting" something suggests I want to bookmark it for later use (which I often don't), but I also know plenty of people who utilize the star as a pseudo-like. I've tried that myself for a while, but it just felt wrong. Apparently most people don't share the same cognitive block. I agree with tyre's assessment. "Liking" something is substantively different from "favoriting," at least for those of us who overthink its application or feel that marking something as a favorite has connotations beyond simply giving a nod to the person who posted. What this means is anyone's guess or even if it's going to matter in the long run. Insignificant observation? Likely! But it's one more data point that agrees with a few others here.
    - dvanduzer 11y ago
      I'm in the vocal minority along with John Gruber who is upset about the fact that 9 years of stars are now hearts: http://daringfireball.net/linked/2015/11/04/red-heart-problem http://daringfireball.net/linked/2015/11/04/red-heart-proble... But I will get over that, because Twitter is a very useful medium. This has nothing to with the success of Twitter as a business. What I am interested in, is whether this is detectable from background noise of people using Twitter more because it is in the news. That is not the sort of thing that a TechCrunch puff piece is going to care about, and/or Twitter may have good reasons for not bothering to share the data. But I would like to know!
nichochar 11y ago
I think you're a minority. Be careful to remember most humans are not clever people with higher degrees, who (probably in your case) work in tech and pay close attention to these details. I think his analysis is spot on, you're just the outlier ;)
uxwtf 11y ago
I agree. I used "favorites" to bookmark something interesting, to be able to find the information if no time to read. But putting to favorite doesn't mean I like the content. I can favourite a tweet with a link to some bad news, such as shutting down a business, economy getting worse etc. I don't really "like" the tweet, it's just a interesting fact and I want to bookmark it as "favorite".
SirensOfTitan 11y ago
> Are my interactions 6% more engaging? Does the quantity of interactions cover the decrease in quality of meaning? Yes, because the interaction is the same (both in consumer interaction and reward): you're clicking a button. The favorites button, through its monument, made people less likely to engage with posts they enjoy.
baby 11y ago
It's a bit of both. I had no idea what this star stood for. I never understood why they didn't replace it with a "like" button
mgalka 11y ago
Agree, the name change does change the meaning. So it makes sense that more people are using it. As a blogger, Twitter favorites/likes are, and always have been, meaningless. Facebook likes, on the other hand, do have actual value. 1. They contribute to a web page's share count that you see next to the social media buttons 2. They are factored into the Facebook algorithm, and make a post more likely to be shown 3. If I like something, FB will show it to some of my friends as if it were a share One very simple thing Twitter could do is implement #1 and #3. If that did that alone, I would immediately allocate Twitter a much larger share of my ad spend.

by tyre 11y ago

__abc 11y ago

Am 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 ago
I 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 ago
Not, 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 ago
  Suppose 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?
- Retra 11y ago
  Why would anyone change something if it wasn't supposed to have any effect?
- drumdance 11y ago
  Most people don't follow stuff like this very closely. Does the average person actually know it's functionally identical? I might not if I hadn't read about it here, at least not right away. If nothing else I would like something just to see what happens.
  - derefr 11y ago
    Most people don't realize that Liking on Tumblr bookmarks things in a list (a public list, unless you disable it!) either. Or that liking a conversation on Facebook causes you to follow it (people usually think you have to comment; "commenting to follow" is a very common phrase.) Over time, social media platforms have effectively converged on the same basic set of verbs, with each verb doing everything all its parents did. But people still think of the verb as being the same one the platform started with, and limit their use to that use-case. I think it can be smart to switch from a "dialect" verb signifies to a "common loan-word" one, precisely to get people to take notice that the verb really has done more than they thought for a while now.
prawn 11y ago
I also use it to acknowledge a tweet that I don't want to reply to or RT.
- freehunter 11y ago
  That's what I do. I don't care what the button says, it's a positive acknowledgment of the post and that's how I use it. It's trickier with Facebook, and it might be the same with Twitter if I used it for personal interactions, because on Facebook I see a lot of "my family member died" and 'like' is not entirely appropriate for that.
myth_buster 11y ago
I read that Marc Andreessen used favorites the same way to let the people who tweeted to him know that he read their tweets or check their product page etc. The side effect of this behavior was that it sent a signal to the community that "Marc Andreessen" "Favorited" this page/product/tweet which could have surprising effect. I was at a receiving end of this and it brought a hoard of viewership/followers/favorites.
baddox 11y ago
That's interesting. I never thought of it like that. In fact, I didn't even know there was a simple way to see all your past favorites.
ajdlinux 11y ago
I haven't changed how I use that button... I'd always used it as if it were "like", as do most Twitter users I know.
NamTaf 11y ago
You've just described the difference between the two for me. Favouriting a tweet implied that I wanted to reference back to it later, whereas liking a tweet to me conveys that I don't really care to come back to it later but I want to show my appreciation for it without retweeting it.

slouch 11y ago

They've only "diluted the meaning" if what they designed was different than facebook likes. Perhaps they just blew their chance to name the feature initially, and this is the correction.

sjs382 11y ago

> I understand both, but I'll do more of one than another. But until I read the rest of your post, I wasn't sure which one you'd be using more.

prawn 11y ago

I haven't noticed a difference, but I think it was a change they needed to make. Most tweets feel like they go nowhere and get nothing. For the average user, that can really impact the experience compared to an app like Instagram where they're bound to get a handful of encouraging responses. But if Twitter have any sense, they'll do a lot more to encourage the feeling that a tweet has accomplished something, been seen by people, achieved something in the world.

goostavos 11y ago
I certainly noticed a difference in the frequency in which I 'like' things now. I find the animation really satisfying : ) It's like a little firework when you click the button.
- Pxtl 11y ago
  I'm actually disappointed the other twitter verbs don't have a slick anim like that now.
alttab 11y ago
This. This. This. Instagram is killing twitter when it comes to short-form public social profiles. Depending on the hash tags, you will get likes instantly for your photos. The narcissism and instant gratification can be very addicting. With twitter, you either need a re-tweet, or a "favorite," which clearly doesn't work well because no one wants to "bookmark" tweets. To me this looks like an attempt to grab some of the "slacktivism" clicking that Instagram and Facebook provide by copying the metaphor with the lower barrier to entry. To the newest kids on the block (in the literal sense), Twitter could position itself as "Instagram for Text." If that makes any sense, and it catches traction, you could see instagram responding by allowing posts without pictures, etc. The closer these networks get to each other with form and function, the fiercer the fight could be. Which in Twitter's case is a good thing because they've been losing.
- prawn 11y ago
  At one point, they added the ability to see "Tweet Activity" but that could well have worked against them. Prior to tweet activity being visible, I assumed the majority of my followers saw each tweet. But even a tweet with miletone news and a few favourites shows that the tweet was seen by about a sixth of my followers - that's dismal. All that does for me is increase the feeling that tweeting is near-worthless. They need to make the time and social cost of interacting with a tweet as low as possible. Even something that's "less" than a heart. Always thought Instagram could do this by allowing liking where the identity of your like wasn't visible to anyone.

doneata 11y ago

> The real question is what the goal is and whether user are getting more value from more likes versus fewer favorites. I agree; the goal should be indeed improving the net positive contributions to people’s lives. I was happy to find out that there is some work directed at designing products for human values; see Tristan Harris's project, "Time Well Spent": http://timewellspent.io http://timewellspent.io

InclinedPlane 11y ago

Or.... maybe the publicity from the change drew more people's attention to it. If they'd changed it to a moon instead of a star, maybe we'd see the same increase just due to people talking about it so much.

hellbanner 11y ago

I was unable to "favorite" videos on youtube for a few months when they switched to the "thumbs up" for "liking" a video... took me a while to figure it out :/

phoboslab 11y ago

A few years ago we build a website that had a ranking algorithm somewhat similar to reddit. Upvoting a post would put in your favorites. Many users told us that oftentimes they wanted to upvotes a post without putting it in their favs, so we split the behavior and introduced a new fav button in addition to the upvote button. This worked out remarkably well. People voted more without fear of polluting their favs. The overal ranking of posts worked way better with that. I don't think that makes sense for twitter though, because "popular tweets" are not really substantial for the platform - and I actually like that about twitter. It's not so much a popularity contest as platforms are. So, without the need for a strong ranking, I'm not sure if more likes are actually a good outcome. What do we gain from this, other than making it harder to find your (truly) favorite tweets again?

maxerickson 11y ago
The upvote buttons on HN add the item to save lists (available in your own profile). There is apparently some demand for separating it out as you say.

pbreit 11y ago

I suspect much of the increase is simple related to it being in the news, not that it is somehow "better".

dvanduzer 11y ago
It will be nice to see the long term data. But I don't think being in the news has anything to do with it. Nobody who wasn't using Twitter before suddenly heard the announcement and went "Hearts? Finally! I fucking hate stars!" Twitter's a global media platform, so it's hard to tell when the tail is wagging the dog. Unfortunately, the article doesn't explain that it's a 6% increase in this specific activity relative to all the other activity they track. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
- Zancarius 11y ago
  Speaking as one data point, for myself, "favoriting" something suggests I want to bookmark it for later use (which I often don't), but I also know plenty of people who utilize the star as a pseudo-like. I've tried that myself for a while, but it just felt wrong. Apparently most people don't share the same cognitive block. I agree with tyre's assessment. "Liking" something is substantively different from "favoriting," at least for those of us who overthink its application or feel that marking something as a favorite has connotations beyond simply giving a nod to the person who posted. What this means is anyone's guess or even if it's going to matter in the long run. Insignificant observation? Likely! But it's one more data point that agrees with a few others here.
  - dvanduzer 11y ago
    I'm in the vocal minority along with John Gruber who is upset about the fact that 9 years of stars are now hearts: http://daringfireball.net/linked/2015/11/04/red-heart-problem http://daringfireball.net/linked/2015/11/04/red-heart-proble... But I will get over that, because Twitter is a very useful medium. This has nothing to with the success of Twitter as a business. What I am interested in, is whether this is detectable from background noise of people using Twitter more because it is in the news. That is not the sort of thing that a TechCrunch puff piece is going to care about, and/or Twitter may have good reasons for not bothering to share the data. But I would like to know!

nichochar 11y ago

I think you're a minority. Be careful to remember most humans are not clever people with higher degrees, who (probably in your case) work in tech and pay close attention to these details. I think his analysis is spot on, you're just the outlier ;)

uxwtf 11y ago

I agree. I used "favorites" to bookmark something interesting, to be able to find the information if no time to read. But putting to favorite doesn't mean I like the content. I can favourite a tweet with a link to some bad news, such as shutting down a business, economy getting worse etc. I don't really "like" the tweet, it's just a interesting fact and I want to bookmark it as "favorite".

SirensOfTitan 11y ago

> Are my interactions 6% more engaging? Does the quantity of interactions cover the decrease in quality of meaning? Yes, because the interaction is the same (both in consumer interaction and reward): you're clicking a button. The favorites button, through its monument, made people less likely to engage with posts they enjoy.

baby 11y ago

It's a bit of both. I had no idea what this star stood for. I never understood why they didn't replace it with a "like" button

mgalka 11y ago

Agree, the name change does change the meaning. So it makes sense that more people are using it. As a blogger, Twitter favorites/likes are, and always have been, meaningless. Facebook likes, on the other hand, do have actual value. 1. They contribute to a web page's share count that you see next to the social media buttons 2. They are factored into the Facebook algorithm, and make a post more likely to be shown 3. If I like something, FB will show it to some of my friends as if it were a share One very simple thing Twitter could do is implement #1 and #3. If that did that alone, I would immediately allocate Twitter a much larger share of my ad spend.