Recent changes to Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR) were touched on during a segment today on CNBC’s Squawk Alley, with the Squawk team of Jon Fortt and Kayla Tausche joined by Jon Steinberg, the CEO of Daily Mail North America.
Fortt believes Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR)’s changes to their ‘Favorites’ function, which now puts tweets that have been Favorited by users directly into their timelines rather than into a separate section on their profile, could be a good way to increase user engagement, so long as it’s made clear how favorites differ from re-tweets. However the other panelists weren’t as keen on the change.
“The thing I don’t like about this move is that at first I used favorites kind of like bookmarks, it was a way to, cause there’s a place you can still go back to, or things you want to read later, things you want to remember, but I guess I’m the only person using it like that and for everybody else it was more like a promotional tool,” said Tausche.
Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR) users by and large have been unimpressed with the change. Rather than seeing their own feeds, they’re now being inundated with the random tweets which have been Favorited by anyone they follow, essentially hijacking their Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR) feed. It doesn’t even end there, however; it appears users are also randomly receiving tweets from accounts being followed by people they follow.
While re-tweets worked in a similar fashion to the new way Favorites work, the user was aware they would be sending that out to all of their own followers, so it was theoretically only something of great interest that they would re-tweet. Favorites on the other hand were a private way to acknowledge something without having to tell all of your Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR) followers about it.
“[…] I think there’s a way that Twitter could communicate your favorite to the entire world where it’s clear what you meant; I didn’t necessarily want to show this to everyone, but I kind of sent a smiley face to the person […],” Fortt said.
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