Early this month, Twitter announced that they have replaced the star button, also known as favourite (or fav in short) with a heart button they termed as “Like”. The move drew mixed reactions where some people liked it and some did not fancy the move. Some of those who didn’t like the move even went ahead to create tools that sort of brought the star button back. Well, according to this user, it seems Twitter is improving on the now “Like” button by adding more reaction emojis.
I can't believe they're finally letting me 💯 tweets
(The best part is that it's not even a joke, I just found this…) pic.twitter.com/cyJ6Lmfhgx— Ninji (has moved) (@_Ninji) November 16, 2015
I love how the unfinished Twitter emoji favourites feature lets you 💩 tweets. Bet I'm gonna get a lot of those pic.twitter.com/EimC2komja
— Ninji (has moved) (@_Ninji) November 16, 2015
When the like button was pressed , a variety of the common emojis that you probably use daily appear as a popup for you to choose for use. The person even went ahead to give the reason why it happened:
(I have iOS Twitter patched to force-enable all the features that are only activated for specific users- I guess this is a recent addition?)
— Ninji (has moved) (@_Ninji) November 16, 2015
.@wolfiestyle it's real, but *very* unfinished
no server-side or API support, tweets revert to normal likes as soon as the TL refreshes
— Ninji (has moved) (@_Ninji) November 16, 2015
So how would this help? Well, Twitter could be borrowing a leaf from Facebook Reactions where people could give their sentiment to a tweet. Unlike Facebook’s version where the emoji selection is limited, Twitter’s reaction emoji selection is wider, a whole lot wider ( you can see 3 tabs ) which would complicate the whole experience.
Judging by the fact that they brought the like button for newbies to relate to, this move if implemented might make Twitter even more complicated than it is right now. Unless they stick to a certain number of reaction emojis, this could be a botched experiment by a company that is struggling to add more monthly active users.
What do you think about this test by Twitter. Is it a feature you would like to see being implemented?
