Like ‘Em Or Hate ‘Em, Twitter’s New Hearts Get 6 Percent More Likes Than Faves, Says Twitter

Heart or Star? Which one is more effective for Twitter? The masses have decided and the heart has prevailed.

On Nov. 3, Twitter announced that it is changing the star icon into a heart, which will denote "like" instead of favorite, for its main social network service and Vine across all platforms. The switch is due to the observed success of the heart icon on Periscope, the live video streaming app acquired by the social media company earlier this year.

Although some have expressed their minds on wanting the star icon back and how the heart icon is just "too much of a commitment," the majority of Twitter users seems to be responding well to the icon change. During the 8th annual Open Mobile Summit, Twitter's Senior Vice President of Product Kevin Weil told the event moderator, Casey Newton, that with the change from favorites to likes, the company saw an increase of 6 percent in "like" activity within the first week of implementation.

Weil noted that prior to deciding what icon and word to use, several icons and words were tested in a number of different ways across different countries. The experiments pointed out that the heart is a universal and much more inclusive symbol and that the word "like" transcends cultures and time zones.

"People just understand [Like] better," says Weil.

Moreover, Weil justified the changes made by saying that people can like a lot of things, but only a few can be favorites. The SVP also attributed the 9 percent increase in new user engagements to the icon and word change.

Like, as denoted by a heart icon, is currently implemented on Android and iOS, TweetDeck, Twitter.com, Twitter on Windows 10, and tweets across the Internet.

Photo: Pen Waggener | Flickr