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Comment by tyre | Hacker News Reader

> The reason? According to Weil, “It’s easier to understand.”

We aren't comparing apples to apples. It is a different button with different meaning.

The barrier to my "liking" something is substantially lower than my "favoriting" it. I understand both, but I'll do more of one than another.

The real question is what the goal is and whether user are getting more value from more likes versus fewer favorites.

Are my interactions 6% more engaging? Does the quantity of interactions cover the decrease in quality of meaning?

Subjectively, I don't feel like it. Favorites had more meaning to me than Facebook likes precisely because there was a higher bar. They've diluted the meaning of a term and are, unsurprisingly, seeing people use it more often.

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I haven't noticed a difference, but I think it was a change they needed to make. Most tweets feel like they go nowhere and get nothing. For the average user, that can really impact the experience compared to an app like Instagram where they're bound to get a handful of encouraging responses.

But if Twitter have any sense, they'll do a lot more to encourage the feeling that a tweet has accomplished something, been seen by people, achieved something in the world.

I certainly noticed a difference in the frequency in which I 'like' things now. I find the animation really satisfying : ) It's like a little firework when you click the button.

I'm actually disappointed the other twitter verbs don't have a slick anim like that now.

This. This. This.

Instagram is killing twitter when it comes to short-form public social profiles. Depending on the hash tags, you will get likes instantly for your photos. The narcissism and instant gratification can be very addicting.

With twitter, you either need a re-tweet, or a "favorite," which clearly doesn't work well because no one wants to "bookmark" tweets.

To me this looks like an attempt to grab some of the "slacktivism" clicking that Instagram and Facebook provide by copying the metaphor with the lower barrier to entry.

To the newest kids on the block (in the literal sense), Twitter could position itself as "Instagram for Text." If that makes any sense, and it catches traction, you could see instagram responding by allowing posts without pictures, etc.

The closer these networks get to each other with form and function, the fiercer the fight could be. Which in Twitter's case is a good thing because they've been losing.

At one point, they added the ability to see "Tweet Activity" but that could well have worked against them. Prior to tweet activity being visible, I assumed the majority of my followers saw each tweet. But even a tweet with miletone news and a few favourites shows that the tweet was seen by about a sixth of my followers - that's dismal.

All that does for me is increase the feeling that tweeting is near-worthless.

They need to make the time and social cost of interacting with a tweet as low as possible. Even something that's "less" than a heart. Always thought Instagram could do this by allowing liking where the identity of your like wasn't visible to anyone.

Interesting Twitter cheat related to this- if you go to ads.twitter.com and sign up with a credit card, you'll get a lot of new metrics exposed to you without ever actully having to spend any money. I have an abysmal "engagement" rate, but I know at least 50 people see every tweet I make.

http://imgur.com/0vlXbmW.png

Not sure this is what's needed. I see all of that (and more) on analytics.twitter.com when I click to view a tweet's activity, and I never signed up with a CC anywhere.

That exact screen is available to anyone.

Unfortunately, I think they've tailored it for larger users and it does little to sway newcomers or even regulars with modest audiences.

"no one wants to 'bookmark' tweets"

What evidence supports this claim ?

I disagree on a personal level. I used "favorites" almost exclusively to bookmark tweets and I have "unliked" all of my previous favorites because the meaning has drastically changed.

> "no one wants to 'bookmark' tweets"

that rings alarm bells of contradiction in my mind; i always use the favorite to bookmark tweets - and i notice a lot of my followers do the same. of course i want to bookmark them for reading later.

And that action generally notifies the author who is then not sure whether you're showing appreciation or just checking link-bait.

I used to star to read later. I now open the link into a browser and get to it later on. And I use the star a lot less than I would hit the heart on Instagram - and Twitter know that's a serious problem for them.

I agree. Indeed there are 2 separate needs; bookmarking as a read later for tweets containing links (for more advanced users ) and liking for applauding for the crowd.. "for the crowd" will always win for "quarterly" reasons..

Now

Yes, that sounds like hyperbole.

People do want to bookmark tweets. But Twitter reasoned (probably correctly) that people "like" a lot more tweets than they bookmark. Naturally, Twitter likes the idea of visible engagement, so they are encouraging people to do the lighterweight thing.

What's interesting is that I had already found my own behavior changing. For years I used 'favoriting' as bookmarking...but in the last year or so, I've changed and was already using it as a show of appreciation. I wonder if many other people were doing the same thing already.

There is actually very little difference in the functionality btw Twitter and Instagram. The real difference is in the "personalities" they have taken on by virtue of the people who use them.

People on instagram are looking for instant gratification (nothing wrong with that), so it will always win that battle. People on twitter are looking for news, controversy, protests, etc.

That's an important function for some people. But it does not have the same mass appeal, so can only scale to a certain degree. I don't see how they can solve that problem by adjusting the functionality.

Agreed. At a high level, its about users, engagement, and KPIs for the businesses. For instagram that's posts, follows, likes, and comments.

With Twitter, its tweets, follows, "favorites", and... @shouting, which is still a "tweet."

The problem with twitter is if I search for, say #occupywallstreet, I'm probably much less likely to bookmark it than I would "like" an instagram photo.

The difference ultimately lies in the fact that its about attracting investment - and twitter/(instagram/facebook) all share the same piece of that pie. So when you're posting KPIs for your business - they better look better than someone else's even though they are different "people/personalities."

The truth is all social networks are competing for the same influx of new users - those coming of age and interacting with social networks for the first time. Twitter isn't winning the minds of existing users with their hearts - they'll be looking at engagement and retention metrics for users that have joined 6 months from now, and never even knew you could once "favorite" a tweet.

I don't think instant gratification is all there's to it and I don't know why every discussion of Instagram needs to describe its users as narcissists.

I regularly use Instagram as a photo archive to look back on travels, places I've lived, things that happened last month, etc.

And the general effect from my timeline is that I keep being reminded of the health and happiness of my friends, which has nothing to do with narcissism or instant gratification, really.

Didn't say anything about it being narcissistic. I only meant to say that people use Instagram to see photos, which is something that appeals to everyone, myself included.

People use Twitter, on the other hand, to convey ideas, often highly academic or controversial -- doesn't have the same mass appeal.

A few years ago we build a website that had a ranking algorithm somewhat similar to reddit. Upvoting a post would put in your favorites. Many users told us that oftentimes they wanted to upvotes a post without putting it in their favs, so we split the behavior and introduced a new fav button in addition to the upvote button. This worked out remarkably well. People voted more without fear of polluting their favs. The overal ranking of posts worked way better with that.

I don't think that makes sense for twitter though, because "popular tweets" are not really substantial for the platform - and I actually like that about twitter. It's not so much a popularity contest as platforms are.

So, without the need for a strong ranking, I'm not sure if more likes are actually a good outcome. What do we gain from this, other than making it harder to find your (truly) favorite tweets again?

The upvote buttons on HN add the item to save lists (available in your own profile). There is apparently some demand for separating it out as you say.

Am I the only person who hasn't changed how I use that button?? It's what I use to "mark" a tweet so I can easily come back and either read/refer to it later.

I think that approach to using the button fell out of favor a while ago. That is definitely how I used Twitter in the past, but now its more of a "read this, enjoyed it, didn't feel need to respond further"

Not, you're not the only person who uses it the same way. Indeed, it's incomprehensible to me that people would intentionally change how they use something that they know is functionally identical just because it has a different image and word associated with it. I can see how the change might have a more subtle, subconscious influence over the long term.

Suppose they renamed it to "Hate" and made the icon a skull or something, but kept the functionality the same. I bet you (and others) would use it differently, not only because of the psychological difference for you but also because of the difference in how other people will likely react to "voyou Hated this" rather than "voyou Liked this".

"Like" versus "Favorite" is a much smaller change, of course, as is "heart" versus "star" -- but they're still changes. Why shouldn't they have an effect?

Why would anyone change something if it wasn't supposed to have any effect?

Most people don't follow stuff like this very closely. Does the average person actually know it's functionally identical? I might not if I hadn't read about it here, at least not right away. If nothing else I would like something just to see what happens.

Most people don't realize that Liking on Tumblr bookmarks things in a list (a public list, unless you disable it!) either. Or that liking a conversation on Facebook causes you to follow it (people usually think you have to comment; "commenting to follow" is a very common phrase.)

Over time, social media platforms have effectively converged on the same basic set of verbs, with each verb doing everything all its parents did. But people still think of the verb as being the same one the platform started with, and limit their use to that use-case. I think it can be smart to switch from a "dialect" verb signifies to a "common loan-word" one, precisely to get people to take notice that the verb really has done more than they thought for a while now.

I also use it to acknowledge a tweet that I don't want to reply to or RT.

That's what I do. I don't care what the button says, it's a positive acknowledgment of the post and that's how I use it.

It's trickier with Facebook, and it might be the same with Twitter if I used it for personal interactions, because on Facebook I see a lot of "my family member died" and 'like' is not entirely appropriate for that.

I read that Marc Andreessen used favorites the same way to let the people who tweeted to him know that he read their tweets or check their product page etc.

The side effect of this behavior was that it sent a signal to the community that "Marc Andreessen" "Favorited" this page/product/tweet which could have surprising effect. I was at a receiving end of this and it brought a hoard of viewership/followers/favorites.

That's interesting. I never thought of it like that. In fact, I didn't even know there was a simple way to see all your past favorites.

I haven't changed how I use that button... I'd always used it as if it were "like", as do most Twitter users I know.

You've just described the difference between the two for me. Favouriting a tweet implied that I wanted to reference back to it later, whereas liking a tweet to me conveys that I don't really care to come back to it later but I want to show my appreciation for it without retweeting it.

They've only "diluted the meaning" if what they designed was different than facebook likes. Perhaps they just blew their chance to name the feature initially, and this is the correction.

I suspect much of the increase is simple related to it being in the news, not that it is somehow "better".

It will be nice to see the long term data.

But I don't think being in the news has anything to do with it. Nobody who wasn't using Twitter before suddenly heard the announcement and went "Hearts? Finally! I fucking hate stars!"

Twitter's a global media platform, so it's hard to tell when the tail is wagging the dog. Unfortunately, the article doesn't explain that it's a 6% increase in this specific activity relative to all the other activity they track.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Speaking as one data point, for myself, "favoriting" something suggests I want to bookmark it for later use (which I often don't), but I also know plenty of people who utilize the star as a pseudo-like. I've tried that myself for a while, but it just felt wrong. Apparently most people don't share the same cognitive block.

I agree with tyre's assessment. "Liking" something is substantively different from "favoriting," at least for those of us who overthink its application or feel that marking something as a favorite has connotations beyond simply giving a nod to the person who posted. What this means is anyone's guess or even if it's going to matter in the long run.

Insignificant observation? Likely! But it's one more data point that agrees with a few others here.

I'm in the vocal minority along with John Gruber who is upset about the fact that 9 years of stars are now hearts: http://daringfireball.net/linked/2015/11/04/red-heart-proble...

But I will get over that, because Twitter is a very useful medium. This has nothing to with the success of Twitter as a business.

What I am interested in, is whether this is detectable from background noise of people using Twitter more because it is in the news. That is not the sort of thing that a TechCrunch puff piece is going to care about, and/or Twitter may have good reasons for not bothering to share the data. But I would like to know!

> What I am interested in, is whether this is detectable from background noise of people using Twitter more because it is in the news.

Probably not, or at least I'm sure there's some percentage of users who were oblivious to the fact they could "favorite" something. Now they know, and now they're using it (or were reminded?). That said, I'm sure there's also a non-trivial number of users who feel as I do.

I'm sure their UX folks entertained the idea of having both (liking via hearts + bookmarking via favorites) and decided it would be too disruptive to change at this point. I can't really blame them, but I do have to wonder: Are those use cases substantially different enough to warrant having both, or is the advantage of having a single "like" feature (fairly well understood, even across platforms--think Facebook) a more overriding concern with greater utility while maintaining simplicity?

It definitely sucks for people who were using favorites for what they were (or thought they were) intended only to have it changed up.

> "Hearts? Finally! I fucking hate stars!"

I can't quite make sense of https://twitter.com/mjg59/status/661781723038912512 but it's quite clearly related to the (soviet-)star->heart transition over at twitter.

It did change my behavior. It's a heart, for things I'm emotional about (LEGO nostalgia) I'll heart a lot faster and a lot more. A fav was more a stretched bookmark used for non public sign of interest.

I think you're a minority. Be careful to remember most humans are not clever people with higher degrees, who (probably in your case) work in tech and pay close attention to these details.

I think his analysis is spot on, you're just the outlier ;)

Agree, the name change does change the meaning. So it makes sense that more people are using it.

As a blogger, Twitter favorites/likes are, and always have been, meaningless. Facebook likes, on the other hand, do have actual value.

1. They contribute to a web page's share count that you see next to the social media buttons

2. They are factored into the Facebook algorithm, and make a post more likely to be shown

3. If I like something, FB will show it to some of my friends as if it were a share

One very simple thing Twitter could do is implement #1 and #3. If that did that alone, I would immediately allocate Twitter a much larger share of my ad spend.

> The real question is what the goal is and whether user are getting more value from more likes versus fewer favorites.

I agree; the goal should be indeed improving the net positive contributions to people’s lives. I was happy to find out that there is some work directed at designing products for human values; see Tristan Harris's project, "Time Well Spent":

http://timewellspent.io

Or.... maybe the publicity from the change drew more people's attention to it. If they'd changed it to a moon instead of a star, maybe we'd see the same increase just due to people talking about it so much.

I agree. I used "favorites" to bookmark something interesting, to be able to find the information if no time to read. But putting to favorite doesn't mean I like the content. I can favourite a tweet with a link to some bad news, such as shutting down a business, economy getting worse etc. I don't really "like" the tweet, it's just a interesting fact and I want to bookmark it as "favorite".

> Are my interactions 6% more engaging? Does the quantity of interactions cover the decrease in quality of meaning?

Yes, because the interaction is the same (both in consumer interaction and reward): you're clicking a button. The favorites button, through its monument, made people less likely to engage with posts they enjoy.

I was unable to "favorite" videos on youtube for a few months when they switched to the "thumbs up" for "liking" a video... took me a while to figure it out :/

> I understand both, but I'll do more of one than another.

But until I read the rest of your post, I wasn't sure which one you'd be using more.

It's a bit of both. I had no idea what this star stood for. I never understood why they didn't replace it with a "like" button

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