twitter hearts

A big change has happened today in the world of social media, and you may have noticed it on Twitter. The favourite stars have disappeared into cyberspace (pun intended) and hearts are taking their place!

Now, instead of selecting the ‘favourite’ star you can ‘like’ something with a heart. The idea behind the change is simple, it shows how you feel, it shares your love for something, and you can say a lot more with a heart than you can with a star!

What It Means for Twitter

Believe it or not, Twitter actually owns several other social media platforms such as Vine and Periscope and both of those platforms use the heart to show love for live streaming videos and short clips.

But why did Twitter decide to switch? It was most likely an easy move for them, making sure that all of their platforms remained consistent with each other and they listened to the people. Similar to Facebook ‘Likes’ people wanted to be able to show more emotion, not just a simple thumbs up or to send a star, but they wanted to show people they cared. Although a star is universal, it doesn’t have much impact when reading a sad or upsetting tweet. A heart shows more emotion, it shows empathy, it shows happiness and more importantly its meaning is endless.

What it Means for Social Media

This small change will by no means overhaul social media in any way, but you will notice the difference the next time you check out Twitter. The exciting news is that it is not just a simple button, but it’s actually animated and you’ll see a multitude of colours when ‘liking’ something on Twitter.

Some people love the hearts and other people loathe the hearts.

What are your thoughts?