SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 3 (UPI) — Twitter surprised users Tuesday by renaming its longstanding “Favorites” section “Likes” and changing its accompanying star symbol into a heart.
The change comes as the social media giant aims to make Twitter more appealing to new users.
“We hope you like what you see,” Akarshan Kumar, product manager at Twitter, said in a blog post. “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 favorite.”
The social network has been testing out the use of hearts since June and views the symbol as something that transcends languages and cultures. The heart is “a universal symbol that resonates across languages, cultures and time zones,” Kumar said, “enabling you to convey a range of emotions and easily connect with people. And in our tests, we found that people loved it.”
“You can say a lot with a heart. Introducing the new way to show how you feel on Twitter,” the company wrote on its site announcing the news along with a short animated video giving examples of what the heart symbol represents.
Hearts and “likes” will be rolling out to Twitter for iOS, Android, Windows 10, Twitter.com and TweetDeck starting Tuesday. Vine for Android and the web will also be getting hearts Tuesday. Vine for iOS and Twitter for OS X, will be getting them in the near future.
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