Change could prove very costly for Twitter

TWITTER can be difficult to use – something its leaders admit. A top priority of new chief executive Jack Dorsey is to make the site more intuitive to outsiders. On Tuesday, the company demonstrated one way it plans to do that, by letting users “like” tweets with a heart icon, replacing the star-shaped “favourite” button.

Outrage ensued. In trying to appeal to the masses, Twitter alienated its base of users who have gotten quite used to the implications of a “favourite”, and have assigned particular meaning to stars that hearts just cannot replace.

There’s the hate-fave, when something angers you so much and you want to react but not retweet it. There’s the flirt-fave, to subtly tell your crush they’re being funny or smart. There’s the fave that lets you acknowledge a response to your tweet, without having to engage further. Hearts bring love into the equation. And love can seem out of place. They also make Twitter sound more like Facebook.

Coca-Cola

Some users drew parallels with the New Coke debacle of the 1980s, when Coca-Cola introduced a new flavour for its popular soft drink – to the horror of traditionalists. It reversed course within months, bringing back the original Coke.

Facebook has acknowledged, as it becomes more of a news destination, that “likes” may not be applicable to tragic stories about plane crashes or the refugee crisis, for example. It is now testing new buttons that would let people be angry, or say “wow”.

Twitter’s executives seem to think people will get over it. Spokesman Jim Prosser posted a picture of Aaron Rodgers saying “R-E-L-A-X”, in reference to the quarterback’s famous comments to Green Bay Packers fans ahead of a winning season. Twitter investor Chris Sacca, who pushed for this change in a blog post about Twitter’s challenges in June, acknowledged the new button may be hard to accept at first.

If core users are this riled up about favourites, we can imagine how they’ll react to some other changes Twitter is considering, like extending the 140-character limit on tweets. But it has been struggling with slowing user growth, and this may be the price of going mainstream. – Bloomberg

PHOTO: AP This screen shot shows tweets on the AP Business News Twitter feed, featuring heart icons that, when clicked, means that a reader “likes” a tweet.

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