Until 2015, Twitter"s "like" button was rather different: it was referred to as the "favorite" button, and came in the form of a star, rather than its current heart-shaped persona. It was changed over because according to the company, "you might like a lot of things, but not everything can be your favorite."
It looks like things are once again set to change on this front, however: in what looks like an attempt to distract people from the lack of a way to edit tweets, Twitter is giving its users something else to be angry about: the "like" button"s potential removal.
As the above blurb indicates, there"s not much to go on right now, though the Telegraph article that broke this news does link us to studies that revealed that "like" buttons - not just on Twitter - have a tendency to encourage an unhealthy need for validation more than anything else; getting rid of the "like" button would dramatically change how people interact on the platform.
Needless to say, users are upset over both the nature of this move as well as the company"s apparently lax attitude towards its platform"s rampant harassment issues.
Not long after, Twitter"s PR chief, Brandon Borrman spoke out in an attempt to clear the air, stressing on the fact that such a change will not take place anytime "soon", like the initial tweet had mentioned.
Of course, such a drastic change to the site"s engagement mechanism isn"t likely to happen overnight. Core money-makers like sponsored tweets and other advertisements require the presence of easily available metrics in the form of likes and retweets, and taking one of those away would involve a drastic thinking of the platform and how it generates revenue.
Consequently, it remains to be seen how Twitter"s efforts to work out the various issues plaguing it pan out.
Source: The Telegraph