Monday, October 31, 2011

When Twitter favorites aren’t favorites


I like the “favorites” button on Twitter, but I don’t use it to mark my favorite tweets.
I use the favorites button for two purposes, neither of which involve me expressing my opinion about a tweet.
For me, the microblogging service Twitter is mostly a news feed. I follow 23 technology, business, media and entertainment news services, which can post hundreds of tweets a day to share weblinks to articles. When I’m pressed for time, I’ll click the favorites star to mark a tweet that I plan to return to later.
I also use the favorites star to bookmark the last tweet I read. That way I don’t waste time rereading tweets to find where I left off.
This isn’t a problem except that Twitter now alerts members when someone “favorites” one of their tweets. I wish Twitter would stop doing this. If a tweet is truly a favorite, I’ll retweet it to my followers and add to my tweet stream.
I can’t be the only Twitter user who uses the favorites button this way. Without a way to mark where you left off, Twitter feeds can be overwhelming.
I hope Twitter keeps the favorites button, but also learns what users are really doing with it.

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