On 19 Sep 2012, Twitter announced new profiles which allow you to upload an all-new header photo that will represent your brand consistently across desktop and mobile apps for iPad, iPhone and Android. Also on 8 April 2014 Twitter released the new web profile lets you use a larger profile photo, The previous header has been replaced by a header photo that is not as big as on Facebook.
Twitter Hearts//
Twitter has been experimenting with hearts for some time. The social network began testing the feature on Android over the summer and later expanded it to iOS.
Officially Twitter just replaced its “fav” star icon with a heart button as Twitter aiming to improve user engagement. With most minor changes to Twitter replaces stars with hearts, the newly introduced heart option by Twitter is now known as a Facebook-style “like”.
You can say a lot with a heart. Introducing a new way to show how you feel on Twitter: https://t.co/WKBEmORXNW pic.twitter.com/G4ZGe0rDTP
— Twitter (@Twitter) November 3, 2015
The hearts now show up in TweetDeck and on Twitter’s website, as well its iOS, Android and Windows 10 apps. It will also be rolling out to Vine’s Android app and website; Vine’s iOS app and Twitter for Mac.
The recent changes that seem to be moving Twitter away from a unique user experience to more of a Facebook user experience. But we all know that Instagram, the photo-sharing app bought by Facebook in 2012, also has a heart-shaped icon for users to “like” pictures!
More Facebooked version of Twitter?
Twitter has served as a real-time source of information since its inception in 2006. We can not say that Twitter is copying Facebook. Copying features from popular apps and services become common for Social Media giants. Do you remember Facebook adopting hashtags which used to be one of the most unique features on Twitter?
- Twitter launched verified accounts back in 2009 and after four years, Facebook launched verified profiles and pages.
- Twitter launched its video app Vine then Facebook announced a Vine-like 15 seconds video feature for Instagram.
- Twitter implemented followers option since day one. In September 2011, Facebook launched a [Subscribe] feature. In December 2012, Facebook changed the name of its [Subscriber] feature to [Follow].
Facebook has made a lot of changes to its platform over the years to copy Twitter features, Also copying Foursquare with its launch of Facebook Places.
Twitter and Facebook have different aims and platforms. No, Twitter is not trying to be the next Facebook as Facebook is already here and the world do not need a new Facebook! Twitter is targeting a totally different used than Facebook.
Twitter is just Twitter//
Twitter goal is reach the user who can fully express they message in 140 characters or less while Facebook status can be up to 5000 characters.
We are not sure how adding a hashtag increased the engagement on Facebook or if there is a guarantee that Twitter’s new heart would evolve into increasing the active users for Twitter!
Obviously, we love to see Twitter and Facebook fighting for unique user experience but it feels sad to see the two Social Media giants reinventing the wheel copying each other!
On a separate note, Could we see LinkedIn Hashtags soon?