Twitter angers users with `favourites’ experiment
19 Aug 2014
Some Twitter users are angry with the micro-blogging site for experimenting with a new feature which broadcasts ''favorites'' to followers as if they were retweets, The Telegraph reported.
Twitter users can retweet another user's tweet, which leads to its rebroadcast to their followers, or they can ''favorite'' it, which adds the tweet to a personal list of content that is not entirely private but is also not automatically announced to third parties.
The ''favourite'' feature is used by many people as a way to store links to stories that they want to read later, or tweets that they wished to keep a link to for posterity. It is used by others as appreciation, or as thanks for a certain tweet, in a way similar to Facebook's "like" feature.
Twitter continues to experiment, however, and some users are now finding that their news streams are being filled with links and tweets which the people they followed had ''favorited''.
According to Daily Digest News, only some users appeared to be subjected to the experiment, but those affected voiced their frustrations on twitter:
Ooh now twitter inserting selected ''[person you follow] faved'' tweets into main timeline pic.twitter.com/zDhrNseNGs
- Hunter Walk (@hunterwalk) August 16, 2014
I DO NOT WANNA SEE WHAT PEOPLE FAVORITE ON MY TIMELINE THANKS TWITTER
- beverly (@breadverly) August 17, 2014
-@twitter so you're showing what people favorite on my timeline now? Isn't that what a RT is for?
- Nathan William (@Treadzone) August 17, 2014
According to Twitter's blog post, it was rare for a day to go by that did not include the release of one experiment or another, and although users rarely even noticed the changes, this time, it seems to have touched a raw nerve.