If you’re a regular Twitter user, you may have noticed something a bit different this morning – gone are the stars you click on when you like or agree with someone’s tweet. Instead, they’ve been replaced by Instagram-esque hearts.
Twitter’s Product Manager Arkashan Kumar explains:
“We are changing our star icon for favourites to a heart and we’ll be calling them likes. 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. You might like a lot of things, but not everything can be your favourite.
The heart, in contrast, is a universal symbol that resonates across languages, cultures, and time zones. The heart is more expressive, enabling you to convey a range of emotions and easily connect with people. And in our tests, we found that people loved it.”
The responses to this massive change vary; some people expressed outrage while others embraced the changes. The implications for businesses using Twitter accounts are out there though – will the heart resonate with business customers on a more universal level and thus, increase engagement? Are customers more likely to click on a heart rather than a star when they see a favourable tweet from a business they follow?
What are your thoughts on #TwitterHeart? Do you, ahem, heart it or do you prefer the old star?