
Hearts on Twitter - janvdberg
https://blog.twitter.com/2015/hearts-on-twitter
======
soyiuz
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??

~~~
Touche
Cynically I'd say that Twitter doesn't care about that use case because it's
not one of the ones that make them money. The use case they care about is
Advertisers looking at their engagement graphs and seeing that people liked
their new product release tweet.

~~~
neoncontrails
You're being too cynical. What brand wouldn't love to be seen enabling the
downfall of a nefarious authoritarian regime? It is an advertisement more
powerful than anything drafted on Madison Avenue.

~~~
minimuffins
"Twitter doesn't care about protests because it won't make them any money" ->
Too cynical

"Twitter DOES care about protests because it will actually make them lots of
money" -> NOT CYNICAL AT ALL

------
xjay
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
> 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
> 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.

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

~~~
smtddr
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
This seems more likely as hashtags and mentions both came from how users were
using Twitter, they weren't originally in Twitter.

------
janvdberg
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
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.

~~~
brlewis
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.

~~~
the_watcher
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
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.

------
iconjack
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
context provides the other bits. 'hearting' a baby announcement is not the
same as 'hearting' a funny meme.

~~~
kenko
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
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.

------
r3bl
> 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
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
I'm surprised people associate stars with bookmarks (people still bookmark
websites?) rather than a seal of approval.

~~~
JTon
> people still bookmark websites?

What? Who _doesn't_ bookmark websites?

~~~
Shank
I used to, but the increasing amount of 404ing in my bookmark collection led
me to stop trusting that I could get back to something with it. I think I'd
prefer a "whole page snapshot" rather than a bookmark.

~~~
Nadya
To prevent 404'ing an Archive service can be used. But I feel that is a little
abusive to archive the page then bookmark the archive, so I take whole page
screenshots. :)

In Firefox: Shift+F2 --> 'screenshot --fullpage'

------
m1
For people wanting to revert to the old favourites icon:
[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/twitter-old-
favour...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/twitter-old-
favourite/lkfbecccmniadcbdhkeepdkfekhloinc)

~~~
oliv__
Well... that was fast!

------
agentgt
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)

------
dombili
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.

------
hack_mmmm
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
> To solve this problem, I would say the real symbol should be "Star"

Are you ... what?

------
codezero
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
> 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
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.

------
justizin
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.

------
oldmanjay
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
Seems like a "New Coke"-type publicity stunt, doesn't it?

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

~~~
Amorymeltzer
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".

------
chuckgreenman
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."

------
homulilly
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.

------
demian
I "love" this tweet about how 10 people died on an earthquake last week.

It has the same problem as "Like".

~~~
corobo
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

------
staunch
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
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
Have you tried turning off retweets? It makes @pmarca's feed his actual
thoughts instead of a mess of stuff.

------
bovermyer
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?

~~~
venomsnake
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
> 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-...](http://allthingsd.com/20130109/reddits-funding-round-is-for-real-and-
its-only-for-angels/)

------
the_watcher
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).

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

------
evv
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
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
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.

------
pmlnr
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.

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

------
apricot13
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.

------
bingobob
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
Same functionality.

~~~
bingobob
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

------
tdkl
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.

~~~
jonknee
You could previously view people's favorites. Example:

[https://twitter.com/gruber/favorites](https://twitter.com/gruber/favorites)

------
dkarapetyan
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.

------
jscheel
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
More than a like, I understand it as a "I acknowledge your response, but I
have nothing to add. Have a good day!"

------
Grue3
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
> 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
It'd be surreal if the stars on their flags were bookmarks.

------
armandososa
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
It's literally just a change of icon. You may continue to use it exactly as
you were using it before.

~~~
codezero
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.

~~~
moron4hire
That's literally what retweeting is.

~~~
codezero
Is it?

In most other social networks Sharing has the connotation that this will post
the content to _another_ social network, not propagate it within it. Sharing
on Facebook is self-contained, but not always.

But I know, my point is that this is not a functional change, but a change in
name and iconography that will affect behavior.

They wouldn't have changed it, if they didn't think it would change the
behavior to be what they desire (more new users using it).

------
mschuster91
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.

------
tolmasky
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.

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

------
agumonkey
Completely reminds me of [http://borislavkiprin.com/2014/01/27/meanings-
favorite-retwe...](http://borislavkiprin.com/2014/01/27/meanings-favorite-
retweet/)

------
dreamdu5t
They might as well just announce in a PR that they have no idea what they're
doing.

------
fideloper
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.

------
tildlyo
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
So previously you were saying them dying was your favorite thing. I don't get
how this is different.

------
moron4hire
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.

------
gukov
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.

------
BHSPitMonkey
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)

------
vool
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)

------
hk__2
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.

------
chinathrow
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.

------
madisonmay
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
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10507474](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10507474)

------
midgetjones
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)

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

~~~
miradu
no API changes: [https://blog.twitter.com/2015/hearts-for-
developers](https://blog.twitter.com/2015/hearts-for-developers)

------
n72
And to think I was going to buy a heap load of TWTR yesterday!

------
findjashua
dear twitter, bookmarks & likes are 2 separate things

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

