It's been one week since Twitter made the switch from "favorites" to "likes," and here's some bad news in case you were hoping it might ever switch back: the company has seen a pretty favorable uptick in activity since it ditched the star button. Kevin Weil, Twitter's SVP of product, announced at the Open Mobile Summit in San Francisco today that the company has seen a 6 percent Periscope increase in activity since it made the switch.
Weil, who was speaking on a panel moderated by The Verge's Casey Newton, said that the company's research led them to believe that the change would create more engagement across the platform, something that the data seems to confirm. When you consider Twitter's hundreds of millions of monthly active users, Weil said, "moving that number by 6 percent is huge."
Weil then elucidated that the 6 percent increase was just for existing users. New users embraced the new heart-shaped button even more, with activity increasing 9 percent. (Exactly how Twitter splits "new" and "existing" users wasn't made clear.) Twitter attributes the increase to hearts being "easier to understand" than the star-shaped favorite button. "The heart is a universal symbol," he said. "It’s a much more inclusive symbol."
Numbers and feathery speech aside, there is undeniable incongruity of applying "heart" or "like" to certain tweets, something that has caused a lot of hand-wringing from long-time users (like the above) over the last week. But CEO Jack Dorsey has promised to boost Twitter's stagnant user growth with "bold moves" ever since he came back to the position full time, a strategy that's resulted in the launch of Moments, the company's first television ads , and even some layoffs . Really though, Twitter has endured constant change since its inception, like the addition of conversation threading or the introduction of hashtags. So the hearts are likely here to stay — at least, until the service inevitably evolves once again.
source: http://www.theverge.com/2015/11/10/9705584/twitter-hearts-likes-favorites-activity-increase
