Twitter rolls out ‘likes’ in Ireland

Twitter investor Chris Sacca got his way, instead of clicking on a star to ‘favourite’ a tweet, users will click on a heart to ‘like’ it.

The new responses are only available for now in Ireland and Spain, and will roll out more widely depending how the tests go.

It is a change Mr Sacca asked for back in June, when the influential Lowercase Capital founder, an early investor in the social media company, wrote a blog post outlining his solutions for the problems he saw at Twitter.

He argued that using hearts instead of stars “would directly encourage more posting and more frequent visits to Twitter”.

Twitter says the switch will make the site easier to use, since the star could be confusing to new users.

“You might like a lot of things, but not everything can be your favourite,” the company said in a blog post.

“The heart, in contrast, is a universal symbol that resonates across languages, cultures and time zones.”

It is also the same thing that rival services such as Instagram use.

And by calling it a ‘like’, Twitter is piggybacking on the popularity of Facebook’s term for its widely recognised thumbs-up button.

Twitter does not mention its rivals or Mr Sacca as the reason for its change, instead saying that hearts are already popular on its Periscope live video-streaming application.

Twitter is making the change a few weeks after reinstating co-founder Jack Dorsey as CEO.

Dorsey has vowed to improve Twitter’s product to attract a broader set of users.

The San Francisco-based company is considering several other modifications, including extending the 140-character limit on Tweets.

Twitter is not the only company rethinking its reaction options for users.

Facebook recently added a few alternatives to ‘like’ with six emoji to represent ‘love’ ‘ha ha’, ‘yay’, ‘wow’, ‘sad’, and ‘angry’.