Twitter Tweaks Favorites To Show On Timelines As Retweets, Users Revolt
Like just about every social networking service, Twitter tries out new things every once in awhile. Unfortunately for Twitter, people are creatures of habit, so these changes don't always go over very well, particularly the most recent one -- now when you click on the star icon to favorite a tweet, it will get retweeted on the main timeline.
According to The Next Web, this new functionality has been in place at least since the beginning of August for some users, though it appears that Twitter has begun expanding the feature to more users over the past several days. The problem users have with this is that it's cluttering up their Twitter feeds with junk posts.
"Why does my Twitter timeline randomly show me what people have favorited and who they follow? I don't give a sh*t," a Twitter user complains. "@twitter so you're showing me what people favorite on my timeline now? Isn't that what a RT [retweet] is for?," another user writes.
Retweeting and favoriting posts started as two entirely separate functions, the former to share items that users think their followers will appreciate, and the latter for a wide range of uses, such as to acknowledge receiving a message or saving a link to read at a later time.
There's no doubt that Twitter has good intentions here, such as to encourage user engagement. However, it's far easier to find complaints than praise about the new feature, which suggests it's not having the effect on users Twitter hoped it would.
According to The Next Web, this new functionality has been in place at least since the beginning of August for some users, though it appears that Twitter has begun expanding the feature to more users over the past several days. The problem users have with this is that it's cluttering up their Twitter feeds with junk posts.
"Why does my Twitter timeline randomly show me what people have favorited and who they follow? I don't give a sh*t," a Twitter user complains. "@twitter so you're showing me what people favorite on my timeline now? Isn't that what a RT [retweet] is for?," another user writes.
Retweeting and favoriting posts started as two entirely separate functions, the former to share items that users think their followers will appreciate, and the latter for a wide range of uses, such as to acknowledge receiving a message or saving a link to read at a later time.
There's no doubt that Twitter has good intentions here, such as to encourage user engagement. However, it's far easier to find complaints than praise about the new feature, which suggests it's not having the effect on users Twitter hoped it would.
