Last Tuesday, Twitter went ahead and changed one of the three ways in which fellow users can respond to a tweet (the others being a retweet and a reply), ending the ‘favorite’ and replacing it with a ‘like’. The ‘star’ icon would seemingly be no more, and the ‘heart’ icon would live on.
Twitter followed in the footsteps of Periscope and Instagram, where the heart rules, and went on to state that they felt that the ‘favorite’ could be confusing to some new users. Twitter added that, as the universal symbol for love, the heart is more expressive.
What Twitter users are expressing, however, is certainly not love. This change to a fundamental Twitter tool has upset the masses, leading to hashtags such as #bringbackthestar and a number of Tweeters claiming to boycott the usage of the heart until the star is returned to it’s rightful place. Other users even find that the heart does inflect perhaps too much emotion in a place that really shouldn’t carry feelings (at least not always). Sure, you may have a favorite tweet that you’d like to mark, save, and return to at a later date, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that you ‘love’ it.
Twitter hasn’t yet responded directly to the disgruntled Twitter population, but with users speaking out in droves (because, yes, Twitter was made to be the platform to do just that) one wonders if the Twitter bosses are even slightly reconsidering their move. With some of the angst portrayed in the tweets below, it’s hard to believe that they totally ‘heart’ their decision.
Here are some of our ‘favorites’:
@lybr3: Twitter cant give us an edit button, but they can spend all day changing a star 2 a damn heart! @twitter #bringbackthestar!
@CoachBAlv: I hate clicking the heart on tweets it feels like too much of a commitment #BringBackTheStar
@Monix6277: What the hell happened to my precious little gold star, Twitter?! #BringBackTheStar #Twitter #WeDontWantAnotherHeart
@victoriaj7_usa: I’m still calling them favorites #BringBackTheStar
@JK_Riki: I see people complain about Starbuck’s new cups, but remember at least they aren’t changing their name to Heartbucks. #BringBackTheStar
@DojoSeven: No lie this new twitter heart is kinda weird… #BringBackTheStar
@Eupatria: #bringbackthestar Just weighing in. Hoping our numbers make a difference.
@DawnSunrise1: @twitter hearts make no sense with serious subjects you just want to acknowledge! #BringBackTheStar
@AdamRexroade: Honestly @twitter we don’t “like” things we “favorite” them. This isn’t Facebook. #BringBackTheStar
@mdeslau: The #TwitterHeart is still making me crazy… I want to star things, not heart them. A star is neutral, a heart is not. #BringBackTheStar
