On Tuesday November 3rd 2015 Twitter changed it’s ‘Like’ icon, the star, to the what we see now. The Twitter heart.
At first, as with most change, there was a fair bit of upset around the move. People in general, don’t fair well with change. It’s disconcerting. They liked the star. They didn’t like a love-heart in its place. After all, a heart generally implies love of a romantic nature. There was, from what I saw, a frustration at the move, but we couldn’t do anything about it.
The heart was here.
Twitter wrote a blog post which contained this gif explaining the heart.
This one little heart changed the star and like button completely. No longer was it just a like button, it was a multitude of things to a range of people and depending on circumstances, if one of your tweets is hearted, it could mean one of the above things –
or
as I’ve found, it could mean even more things. It could mean your tweet wants to be saved for later, to be read again, to be bookmarked because it’s useful, I’ve even seen it used as an acknowledgment that you’ve spoken but the tweeter has no response and that’s it the end of conversation.
Personally, how I use it is to bookmark tweets that have useful information in them. Tweets that I want to keep and find again.
But, I fell into the trap, for a while, of using it randomly for the other things. For saying thank you, for ending conversations, for liking what someone said to me. And I’ve realised, as I realised last week in this post about wanting Twitter to be more sociable, that I was just being lazy. Why couldn’t I tweet the words, Thank you, or That’s great!, or Congrats! Wasn’t that what Twitter was for? To be able to converse in short snappy sentences? That was the point of the 140 character limit, wasn’t it? Wasn’t that why we loved it and signed up in our droves? Now we’re getting lazy and not even finishing conversations properly.
So, I’ve ended up with hundreds and hundreds of hearted tweets that are meaningless and in among those are gems that I genuinely want to keep and read again and some I actually want to act on. What I’m now doing is going through these hearted tweets and undoing what I did and removing the hearts. (It doesn’t mean I love you less – you already saw me heart you!) And instead, I’m saying my thank yous verbally, I’m saying Congrats and I’m telling people that’s great!
I still heart Twitter, obvs. But, I’m overhauling how I use it.
If I heart your tweet now, it means something to me.
Look at the amount of hearts you have – how does it make you feel? 🙂
Oh, dear, I’ve never really stopped to think about how I use that heart (and for a while, I kept switching back my settings to star, but then I had to buy too many new gadgets after my move and it got too complicated). I think, like you, I’ve become lazy and use it for everything.
It’s just so easy to use isn’t it?
I haven’t discovered the joys of Twitter yet. And if Trump is any indication of what Twitter is/does, I don’t think I’m missing too much. OTOH, it could be a case of it’s too loud and I’m too old and you kids get off of my lawn.
Trump is just a law unto himself on Twitter! 😮
You bring up an interesting subject, Rebecca. How do we use hearts and so on? For me, it depends on the situation. But I’d say that I mostly use deliberately. It indicates that I enjoyed/am grateful for a particular tweet.
Yes, I see that happening, but if I do that, then I’m losing all the information I’m collecting in the noise. It is a tricky one, especially when people expect it to be used as such now.
Actually say thank you. Now that’s a novel idea.
I’m so observant, I didn’t even realize they’d changed it last year!
Isn’t it?! 🙂
Good Point, Rebecca. What does the ‘heart’ really mean? And you’re right, it CAN be a fast track way of saying ‘thank you’, when it would probably be much nicer to spell it out… It increase options, I suppose – and we all love options!
We do. I just felt it was turning into an easy way out. Maybe just for me then. My amount of hearts saved was/is ridiculous. I need to keep culling. 🙂
After reading your posts on Twitter, it occurred to me that I cannot keep up with the stream of tweets. If I do, it stops me from writing. It’s not social anymore, you’re right. It seems to me it’s just people shouting about what they’ve done and there’s no interaction. A couple of years ago there used to be a great camaraderie on there. Now I find that on Instagram.
I’m afraid to say I’ve made the decision to leave Twitter entirely. I’m having to streamline my social media as I just don’t have time in my life for it all and be productive. So far I haven’t missed Twitter at all. I have Facebook, Instagram and I blog and I’ve decided to focus on these three and try and create ‘social’ spaces on these rather than trying to do everything. You make some great points in this post and I wish you every success in bringing social back to Twitter! 🙂
As an aside, I thought this interpretation of Social Media was very interesting:
I’m sorry you’ve left Twitter, but I agree that you need to find the social networks that work for you. There are so many now and they do suck up your time, so finding the right ones are important. It’s always nice to see you on Instagram. I shall watch this TED video with interest. I love TED videos! Thank you for sharing it x
http://pacc24.pl/wypozyczalnia-samochodow-dostawczych-warszawa.htm
Shopping for a new or used car could be a challenging approach unless you know what you are carrying out. By teaching yourself about vehicle shopping prior to deciding to go to the dealer, you can make points much easier yourself. The following advice will help your following buying trip be a little more enjoyable.
Constantly bring a mechanic coupled when buying a fresh vehicle. Car merchants are popular for marketing lemons and you may not desire to be their after that target. Provided you can not have a technician to look at automobiles together with you, at the very least be sure that you have him evaluate your last option before you buy it.
Know your limits. Before you start purchasing for your upcoming auto or vehicle, make a decision how much you can manage to pay, and stick to it. Don’t overlook to feature fascination with your computations. You will probably shell out all around twenty percent as a down payment also, so be well prepared.
Prior to visiting a car dealership, know what type of vehicle you would like. Investigation all of you options just before buying so that you can determine what works the best for your finances and family members requires. Seek information to determine exactly how much you should pay for a prospective car.
Before you sign any contract make time to study every single collection, for example the small print. If there is nearly anything listed that you just do not fully grasp, will not indicator till you receive an response that you simply understand. Unsavory salesmen may use a legal contract to place many charges that were not discussed.
If you retain the preceding suggestions under consideration the very next time which you go shopping for a auto, you will be more prone to get a better bargain. Purchasing a auto does not have to become a headache. Use the ideas from this post and you could receive the vehicle you want with a excellent value.