Twitter has switched up the star icon to ‘favourite’ tweets, with a heart-shaped icon to ‘like’ them instead.
On the official Twitter blog, product manager Akarshan Kumar said the platform was changing the function to ‘like’ as a ‘favourite’ “could be confused, especially to newcomers”.
“You might like a lot of things, but not everything can be your favourite,” he wrote.
“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.”
You can say a lot with a heart. Introducing a new way to show how you feel on Twitter: https://t.co/P8h2UFRqsk pic.twitter.com/IjBvHb8yJd
— Twitter Australia (@TwitterAU) November 3, 2015
Kumar said users enjoyed using hearts on live-streaming platform Periscope.
AdWeek however questioned whether the move is a copy-cat scheme with Facebook and its well-known ‘likes’, suggesting it was tongue with some tongue-in-cheek humour.
Though AdWeek writer Christopher Heine did note it’s not uncommon for social media platforms to copy one another.
