Twitter likes are now a thing. Thanks to Twitter Inc. investor Chris Sacca the social media platform will be replacing the star icon for “favourite” with a heart just like Instagram. To take the similarity of other social media platforms even further, the new feature will be called “likes” according to a blog post from Twitter.
The company patronisingly tells us that: “You might like a lot of things, but not everything can be your favourite.” It doesn’t mention that Sacca asked for this change back in June when he wrote a blog post outlining his solutions for the problems he saw at Twitter. He argued that using hearts instead of stars “would directly encourage more posting and more frequent visits to Twitter.”
And who were they to argue I guess? After all, Sacca is the founder of influential Lowercase Capital LLC, an early investor in the social-media company.
To win us over the blog claims that the heart is a universal symbol that resonates across languages, cultures, and time zones and is more expressive, enabling you to convey a range of emotions and easily connect with people.
Apparently the company carried out tests and found “that people loved it.”
They said: “You’ve embraced hearts in a big way on Periscope, and we’re delighted to bring them to Twitter and Vine, making them the common language for our global community.”
The new Twitter likes feature will be rolled out across all platforms starting from Tuesday 3 November.
According to the Financial Post Twitter is making the change a few weeks after reinstating co-founder Jack Dorsey as chief executive officer. Dorsey has vowed to improve Twitter’s product to attract a broader set of users. The San Francisco-based company is considering several other modifications, including extending the 140-character limit on Tweets.
I love the new poll feature and the increased direct messages character limit but let’s hope the company doesn’t go too far off course with all these changes.
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