If you are old enough to remember the outrage that followed Twitter’s decision to replace stars with hearts (also known as likes instead of favorites), then you know that the Twitter user base has strong feelings about how they want to feel. engage with tweets. Now, Twitter is considering another radical shift on that front that could shake things up again. The company has been surveying users throughout the month for information on how they feel about a broader set of emoji-like reactions, similar to what you would see on Facebook.
“We are exploring other ways for people to express themselves in conversations that take place on Twitter,” said a Twitter spokesman about the survey.
Specifically, the Twitter survey proposed a few different sets of reaction emojis, all of which include the heart (like), smiling face with tears (funny), thoughtful face (interesting) and crying face (sad).
Image credits: @ jdm0079 on Twitter (opens in a new window)
Then he proposed some variations on this basic set, where the “incredible” feeling could be expressed with a shocked face or a fire emoji, or where a “supportive” feeling could be indicated with the hugging emoji or the raised hands.
More controversially, Twitter is considering a way for users to signal a general liking or dislike for the tweet with a thumbs up or thumbs down, a green or red “100” to indicate “agree” or “disagree” or an icon green up arrow or red down arrow icon, reminiscent of Reddit’s positive and negative voting mechanisms.
Image credits: WFBrother on Twitter (opens in a new window)
The survey questions showed that Twitter is aware of the challenges that arise with the introduction of emoji reactions that can imply negative feelings. He asked respondents how they would like to take advantage of a downvote or dislike, for example – whether they would use the reaction instead of responding to a tweet, or whether they would downvote irrelevant or offensive tweets, too.
Twitter also asked how users would feel if their own tweets were rejected and whether it would discourage them from tweeting in the future, or whether they would consider this more as “constructive” feedback about their content. (There is!)
Image credits: @ jdm0079 on Twitter (opens in a new window)
The company clearly understands that the introduction of reaction sets can have a significant impact on how people engage with Twitter content and potentially can even lead to a negative effect on the use of Twitter if people are overly concerned about have your tweets rejected.
That said, the positive and negative voting mechanism – be it thumb, arrow or whatever – remains a common way of interacting with content anywhere on the web. This includes not only forum sites like Reddit and others, but also YouTube, Imgur and Pandora, to name a few. A “thumbs up” sign by itself, however, is even more popular thanks to Facebook’s leadership. But today, that similar button can also take the shape of an arrow, heart, or just a box to click on – like when you mark a user review on Amazon.com as “Useful,” for example.
Meanwhile, the use of expanded emoji reactions has become more common since Facebook’s set of emoji reactions was launched in 2015. Since then, other social media sites have adopted its use, such as LinkedIn. Twitter even added emoji reactions to its DMs (direct messages) last year.
The Twitter survey also asked users about how the reactions of the emojis should be displayed – for example, whether the negative reaction counts should be visible.
Image credits: @WFBrother on Twitter (opens in a new window)
Twitter told TechCrunch that the work it’s doing in the reaction space is exploratory – it’s just doing this research now because the company is thinking about how people can add more nuances to the conversations they’re having, and how, in doing so , readers would be able to better understand the additional context around these conversations. In addition, Twitter notes that the new emoji reactions would not replace the “heart”; they are additives.
But while Twitter hasn’t yet developed its emoji reaction set or put it to the test, it looks like it’s on track to do so.
In response to a user’s recent request to test emoji reactions instead of just hearts, Twitter design director Dantley Davis answered, “We will have something for you soon.”