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Comment by soyiuz | Hacker News Reader

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??

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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.

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.

"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

Lol not sure if you're joking or not. How is your idea not "cynical", even closer to the definition of "cynical"?

Well the CEO cares for that use case for sure as he left for Ferguson when he was asked to be around for some important decision making at Square.

It's a similar problem with 'Like' -- how do you 'like' a post about someone grieving a loss? FB is adding a different reaction button soon.

I think switching from Favorite is a good thing, as favoriting feels just personal, whereas a 'like' or a 'heart' is a public vote of support/appreciation. I do agree, though, that 'heart' is odd, but I can't think of anything else better.

I think 'reactions' is the way to go. Slack has it, Facebook is testing it. I think by this time next year it will be standard.

They radically (and retrospectively) changed the semantics of one of their main actions. All favs, regardless of their original reason, now are "likes" and hearts. What was a reasonably neutral way to highlight tweets, one which could be used in different ways, now becomes one extremely charged with social meaning.

I thought the same thing. Does anyone at Twitter USE it?

The last CEO of Twitter, Dick Costolo, barely used it. That sent a bad signal.

You're right... but even "favorites" means something similar to a lot of people (instead of what it means to most of us who've been long-time users of the internet -- "bookmarks").

I agree that this is going to be an issue going forward.

Yes, but at least "favorites" were somewhat more neutral. They still prevented me from "favoriting" negative news, as it felt like an endorsement.

Hearts work well for things like family photos and cats--the traditional strengths of Facebook. But Twitter's point of differentiation was always live, rapidly developing news. Conferences. Sharp commentary. Leaks. Announcements. A heart is just not the right symbol in these contexts.

Going for the broader market risks weakening the core use cases, which set the platform apart in the first place.

Throw likes and favorites out; use "remember". That's the only reason I like or now, favorite, something on Twitter; it has some significance to me (either positive or negative) that I may want to revisit.

I kind of like that idea. Remember can mean so much and fits more use cases.

I think twitter will have to eventually add something else that caters to the "bookmark" concept without positive or negative feelings clouding the act.

"like" is an acknowledgement, not an adjective in the true sense of the word just like e.g. your family members funeral is not your "favorite" thing

"Like" is not an acknowledgement. "Like" means you like something.

(Not saying that favs worked as acks either, I used them as bookmarks.)

And it's not just a plain heart. Clicking on it initiates an animation that looks like the heart exploding, but in a celebratory way... like fireworks at a celebration.

Twitter messed up again.

Perhaps Twitter has no interest in having users "bookmark" live events, and would prefer to force or at least strongly encourage people to retweet instead.

So implicitly saying "Riots in Istanbul are my favorite!" is better? This is just same problem with liking. (e.g. "My dog died." "Like!") Will changing the terminology and the icon boost engagement? I don't know. I've seen stupider stuff work before.

At least it's now consistent with Periscope and they're both messed up.

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