Twitter’s hearts mean the end for favorites
All social media platforms have their own special thing to express approval or agreement with content. Facebook has the Like button; Google+ has the +1 button; Instagram has the Heart (or Like) button. Twitter has never had something quick like any of those services. This morning, Twitter waved goodbye to one of its longest tenured features in order to become more like Facebook, Google+, and Instagram. The Favorite button on Twitter, indicated for years with a star, has been retired in favor of a heart to represent likes.
You can say a lot with a heart. Introducing a new way to show how you feel on Twitter: https://t.co/WKBEmORXNW pic.twitter.com/G4ZGe0rDTP
— Twitter (@twitter) November 3, 2015
http://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
Twitter decided to move on from favorites because not everything you see can be considered your favorite. Liking something, however, is more free and can be done multiple times without seeming overdone or untrue. So, basically, Twitter wants to allow you to like hundreds of things rather than choosing them as your favorite. To me, this seems like a way for Twitter to encourage more interaction with tweets. Users will see a tweet that has many likes and view it as a piece of content offering more value or buzz. A like is something short-term compared to the long-term structure of a favorite.
Here’s how Twitter explains the value of its new icon:
The heart, in contrast, is a universal symbol that resonates across languages, cultures, and time zones. The heart is more expressive, enabling you to convey a range of emotions and easily connect with people. And in our tests, we found that people loved it.
If these hearts look familiar, that’s because the Twitter-owned Periscope utilizes them. So it only makes sense for Twitter to implement them throughout its own service and Vine as well.
The hearts, which feature a brief popping animation, are already visible on multiple platforms. Users of Twitter on Android, iOS, the web, and elsewhere can start liking tweets today.
Source: Twitter
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Twitter Rebrands ‘Stars’ & ‘Favorites’ to ‘Hearts’ & ‘Likes’
Twitter today announced the impending rollout of a new “Hearts” and “Likes” system for its social network, which will replace the traditional “Stars” and “Favorites” that’s been used on the service for the past few years. The company cites a “confusing” quality to the star system that causes a disconnect between a new Twitter user and anyone who favorites their tweet. The heart, it believes, is more of a universal symbol of expression and connection.
You can say a lot with a heart. Introducing a new way to show how you feel on Twitter: https://t.co/WKBEmORXNW pic.twitter.com/G4ZGe0rDTP
— Twitter (@twitter) November 3, 2015
http://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
We are changing our star icon for favorites to a heart and we’ll be calling them likes. 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 heart, in contrast, is a universal symbol that resonates across languages, cultures, and time zones. The heart is more expressive, enabling you to convey a range of emotions and easily connect with people. And in our tests, we found that people loved it.
The hearts system will also make its way to the Twitter-owned Vine service, rounding out the social networks that the company owns — including Periscope — with a more uniform liking system. The company notes that the new update will roll out starting today on Twitter for iOS and Android, the web, Windows 10, TweetDeck, “and on Tweets across the Internet.” Other services, like Twitter for Mac, will see support coming “soon.”
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Twitter replaces stars with hearts because it loves new users
Say goodbye to favs. The Twitter stars you’ve so desperately collected over the years with your witty status updates are being replaced with hearts. Starting today, both Twitter and Vine will start transitioning to “likes.” According to Akarshan Kumar, Twitter product manager, stars could be confusing to new users, “you might like a lot of things, but not everything can be your favorite.” The social network has been testing hearts since June and says that those people love it and that the heart symbol transcends languages and cultures.
Source: Twitter
Instagram unmasks new curated feed on Halloween
Embedding curated feeds within social media platforms seems to be all the rage these days. Recently Twitter launched both their Moments option and the advertiser driven Promoted Moments as a way to keep users within their app while delivery a more concentrated source of content to users. In a bit of a surprise move, Instagram revealed on Halloween they have their own take on a curated feed ready for users.
If you happened to open Instagram on Halloween, a holiday especially well-suited to a platform focusing on sharing photos, you probably noticed the new curated content option as its availability was front and center on the homepage. Instagram merely invited users to “Watch Halloween’s Best Videos” so it is unclear whether a snappy name has been given to the new feature.
The video channel was available for 24-hours starting at 1 pm on Saturday and showcased the best Halloween videos that Instagram’s staff of curators could locate. The internal effort was headed up by Amanda Kelso, a community director for Instagram, who led a staff of a half dozen team members who pored through user posts to find content for the feed.
Although the feed revealed on Halloween showed how Instagram can capitalize on an event by providing a high entertainment value – after all, what better way to spend a few minutes than watching videos of costumed candy collectors – it also shows how Instagram can get in on the news cycle. Instagram hopes to challenge Twitter as the source for breaking news as revealed by users posting to the platforms. Just like Twitter is working on features like Moments to help users discover trending information, the best videos feature on Instagram can do the same thing.
Instagram is on the look out for more events to feature on the new video channel. Reportedly there are no plans to make the feature available to advertisers ala Twitter’s Promoted Moments.
source: Wired
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This ad is how Twitter is introducing itself to the world
You read Engadget, so you’re probably familiar with Twitter even if you’re not a regular user. For most other people — who apparently aren’t joining fast enough to please investors — it’s just something occasionally mentioned on the news or Sportscenter. Those people are the ones who the social network’s first TV ad is aimed towards. Predictably, the (baseball-focused, since it premiered a few minutes ago during tonight’s World Series game) advertisement is all about the new Moments feature intended to organize and slow the flow of information for new users. I felt more confused than ever about Twitter’s purpose after watching the 30-second spot, but maybe the intended audience will have a different reaction — you can check it out after the break.
Source: Twitter (YouTube)
Twitter raises its follow limit to 5,000 users
Twitter may be having trouble getting more people to use its service, but it’s at least offering more headroom for the folks who’ve already signed up. In a confirmation of what some people had seen earlier in the week, it just raised the follow limit for everyone from 2,000 to 5,000. Previously, you could only break that 2,000-user ceiling if you had a high-enough ratio of followers. The company didn’t explain why it’s suddenly being so liberal, but it’s likely confident that its anti-spam tools will prevent bots from abusing this newfound freedom.
Source: Twitter Support, Twitter Help Center
Twitter continues to struggle with attracting more users
A lot has happened in the land of Twitter in the last few months. It has a new CEO (who really isn’t so new) in Jack Dorsey, who wasted no time in shaking things up in a quest for more users and, of course, more money. Since the last earnings report, Twitter has made a number of announcements towards that end: a curated Moments feed, tweet collections, polls, an updated OS X app and, well, more ads. There’s also talk that Twitter will try to be much more user-friendly going forward and might even perhaps do away with its 140-character limit. Which all sounds rather encouraging, but as the latest Q3 financials show, things aren’t quite so rosy just yet: It registered just 320 million monthly active users in the last quarter, which is 11 percent growth over this time last year and only a marginal increase over the 316 million in the previous quarter.
Twitter’s Moments get a Promoted version
Earlier this month Twitter rolled out their new Moments feature that provides users with a dedicated feed of breaking news curated by specialists retained by Twitter. Twitter hopes this new way of storytelling will keep users returning to the social media platform. Expanding the idea of dedicated feeds, Twitter will be rolling out their first “Promoted Moments” feed this weekend focusing on the new movie Creed.
Managed by MGM, Warner Bros. and New Line Cinema, the Promoted Moments this weekend will work like regular moments in being heavy on photos, videos and animated gifs to tell the story. The difference will be the lack of a Twitter curator being in charge of the feed.
Twitter plans to make the Promoted Moments prominently displayed in an effort to drive revenue growth. Matt Derella, Twitter’s vice president of revenue for North America, anticipates the platform eventually having one Promoted Moment each day. Derella went on to say that companies that take advantage of Promoted Moments will “get this incredible engagement with people coming to see what’s happening in the world, and get this really rich canvas to tell that story.” Of course, some Twitter users may see this as just a way to slide more advertising in front of them by making it look like native content.
source: Twitter
via: Bloomberg
Come comment on this article: Twitter’s Moments get a Promoted version
Twitter adds ads to Moments
Well that didn’t take long. Twitter announced Friday that it will begin monetizing its new Moments feature, which launched at the start of the month. The company will begin leasing a single Moments channel for 24 hours to advertisers who will be free to curate and post both tweets and video content.
Source: Bloomberg
Use Tribeway to share your favorite moments in life (App Review)
With a plethora of social networks that are cropping up everyday, and those that have already found the graveyard, it’s a tough field to get into nowadays. In order to make a name for yourself, you need to do something that is different than the norm, or make sharing your social status easier than what’s already available. With Tribeway, this is somewhat of a different take on social networks. From the “Trails”, to built-in messaging, Tribeway is one of those alternative options out there.
Setup
Tribeway is a social media platform that offers a different experience for sharing your favorite moments, and chatting with your friends. In order to get started, you’ll need to head over to the Play Store and download it for free. Once you’ve opened it up, you’ll need to sign up with either a Facebook or Google+ account. A little redundant, but necessary nonetheless.
After your account is set up, you’ll more than likely want to test the waters to see if any of your other friends have signed up with Tribeway. To do this, hit the Friends tab, and ‘Add Friends’. Chances are, you’re the lone wolf here, but there are some recommendations for folks you can follow. If you want to invite some of your friends to try out Tribeway with you, there is an option to invite as many people as you’d like, and it will invite them through Facebook or Google+, depending upon what you used to sign up with.
Once you’ve got your account set up, and your friends invited, you’ll want to head over to the main screen. From here, you’ll see a few tabs, a few other buttons as well. What you are presented with, is called “Trails” and is essentially your news feed. Here is where folks you follow can post groups of images and videos, and you can react to those with a thumbs-up, comment, or you can “Boost the post, which will make the post appear on your trails for all of your friends.
Usage
In the bottom right hand corner of the screen, you’ll find a Floating Action Button(FAB), which takes you into your friends panel. From here you can select friends to share your trails with, as well picking which images you would like to have posted. Posting a trail is actually a bit tedious.
In order to post a trail, you’ll need to hit that FAB, and once you select the images, you’ll need to create choose a cover image. Now, in order to even post the trail, you’ll need to sign in with your Google account, so that you can attach your Google Drive account. We aren’t exactly sure why this is the case, however, it’s just another step that needs to be taken for posting simple images.
There are a lot of steps that need to be taken just to post a simple Trail, so it’s a little off-putting, but once you get used to the process, it’s just a matter of tapping a few times. Not as fast as Instagram or Facebook, but hey, it’s another way to share your favorite images with folks on the interwebs.
Tribeway also includes the ability to chat and/or call your contacts. It’s like having Facebook Messenger built into the Facebook app again. Simply tap a contact, and open up the conversation. There’s no cost associated with the messaging service, so this is another alternative to something like Telegram or WhatsApp.
What We Like
- Easy to navigate interface
- Trails are laid out in an attractive fashion
- Messaging is built-in and doesn’t require any extra downloads
And Not So Much
- Too many taps to share a single image
- Not many people using Tribeway
- Doesn’t do anything that isn’t already available elsewhere
Overall, Tribeway is just another social network, and although it’s not as intuitive as others, Tribeway may be something worth considering. If you’re tired of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or Google+, and want to give something else a shot, Tribeway is deserving of a look or two. However, remember that you can’t sign up without a Google+ or Facebook account, and chances are, none of your friends are on there. So you’ll need to invite them before anything else.
If you’re interested in Tribeway, drop us a line and let us know. We love connecting with our readers, so let us know if you’re using it, and we’ll definitely do some connecting.
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