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.
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.
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.
Unfortunately, I think they've tailored it for larger users and it does little to sway newcomers or even regulars with modest audiences.
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.
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 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.
People use Twitter, on the other hand, to convey ideas, often highly academic or controversial -- doesn't have the same mass appeal.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Now