Twitter ditches the star in favour of a HEART and social media goes into meltdown

Twitter is changing one of its most distinctive features by replacing its star icon with a heart.

Stars have been used to show favourite tweets, but they will make way for hearts which simply show 'likes'.

Users will also see the change on Vine's apps and the company's website.

You can say a lot with a heart. Introducing a new way to show how you feel on Twitter: https://t.co/WKBEmORXNW pic.twitter.com/G4ZGe0rDTP — Twitter (@twitter) November 3, 2015

Twitter product manager Akarshan Kumar said in a blog post: 'We are changing our star icon for favourites to a heart and we'll be calling them likes.

'We want to make Twitter easier and more rewarding to use, and we know that at times the star could be confusing, especially to newcomers.

'You might like a lot of things, but not everything can be your favourite.

'The heart, in contrast, is a universal symbol that resonates across languages, cultures, and time zones.

 

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Twitter product manager Akarshan Kumar said in a blog post : 'We are changing our star icon for favourites to a heart and we'll be calling them likes...The heart is more expressive, enabling you to convey a range of emotions and easily connect with people (examples from Twitter of what the heart could express are shown)

'The heart is more expressive, enabling you to convey a range of emotions and easily connect with people. And in our tests, we found that people loved it.'

Likes will work in the same way as favourites, so users can click on a heart beneath a tweet to show their approval.

Users will be able to see 'liked' tweets in what was the 'favourites' section, which is also being re-named.

The changes will be noticeable from today on Twitter.com as well as in the iOS and Android apps.

The icons will also swap over on TweetDeck, Twitter for Windows 10 and Tweets across the inteet as well as Vine.  

So far, despite the company's confidence that hearts will be a hit, lots of Twitter users seem to be less than keen on the change.

One user @conradhackett tweeted: 'What just happened to my desktop Twitter? I see reports of likes instead of favs and hearts appear below tweets. Is this Facebook?'

While another, @youngvulgarian said: 'om*g Twitter is replacing the favourite stars with hearts this is the worst thing that's every happened in the history of the world'.

kate@crawford said: 'Why are there love hearts everywhere Twitter? It's like Hello Kitty threw up in here'. 

Forbes has been running a reaction poll on Twitter and so far it seems around three quarters of people who voted preferred the star to the new heart logo.

Why are there love hearts everywhere, Twitter? It's like Hello Kitty threw up in here. — Kate Crawford (@katecrawford) November 3, 2015

So far, despite the company's confidence that hearts will be a hit, lots of Twitter users seem to be less than keen on the change. One funny reaction is shown above

Some commentators have remarked that the change may be a desperate attempt for attention from a company with faltering user numbers.

Last week, Twitter released a disappointing set of quarterly eaings as well as low fourth quarter projections.

The microblogging site is running at a loss of $132 million after taxes and has failed to add any American users in 2015, The Atlantic reported. 

Twitter has around 320 million users, but has only added 4 per cent in the past year in the US and 13 per cent overall, perhaps suggesting the site's popularity has peaked.

Twitter says it hasn't added any new U.S. users in 2015 pic.twitter.com/T1q7XvVaO2 — Jon Passantino (@passantino) October 27, 2015

\"LIKE\" is for Facebook \"HEART\" is for Instagram \"FAVOURITE\" is for Twitter and now Twitter wants to be unoriginal and mix FB with IG — yoshhhh (@_pearlyyy) November 3, 2015

So why did Twitter change the favourite button from a star to a heart? How can we low-key like our crushes' tweets now without any suspicion — DLSU Amphiturtle (@Amphigong) November 3, 2015

WTF does that heart supposed to mean? Is this Twitter or Hello Kitty dot com? — Ido Daniel (@IdoDaniel) November 3, 2015