Social Change – Heart it or Hate it?

The average Brit spends a whopping 1 hour 20 minutes browsing and managing their social media accounts per day – the numbers put our digital obsession into perspective and it’s clear that we love to socialise online. This being so, you must notice the not-so-subtle changes that are continuously made by the social media giants we offer our time to?

Amongst the most recent stirs in the social media world are Facebook’s ‘reactions’ and Twitter’s ‘heart’, both of which take a huge assumption on the user’s emotions, and the way in which we wish to express them.

Facebook Emoticon Emotions

Users in Spain and Ireland are already using a range of emoticons as ‘reactions’ on Facebook, including sadness and anger – two emotions that Facebook believe could not previously be portrayed using the original ‘like’ button. Other ‘reactions’ available are ‘haha’ and ‘love’, but my questions is – can users not portray all of these emotions (and countless more) using a little device I like to call ‘words’? If Facebook is concerned about the ‘like’ button and its connotations – or lack of – where does this stop? Do we begin with 7 choices of emoticons and see more additions as time goes on, when people begin rely on these instead of the infinite possibilities of language?

Do you Heart it or Hate it?

Twitter has made a bolder move still and completely replaced the favourite ‘star’ icon with a ‘heart’ icon, which they’ve called a ‘like’. Sound familiar? The ‘heart’ of Instagram and the ‘like’ of Facebook to replace the original ‘star’ of Twitter. Users have expressed their disbelief at the notion that Twitter have changed such an iconic part of their social network – we can no longer ‘star’ something that we acknowledge but don’t enjoy, or learn from but don’t love.

It goes without saying that all aspects of the digital world are moving at a pace that’s difficult for us to keep up with – but are the changes necessary? Do they change for improvement or for the sake of change? And what comes next?

We’d love to hear your opinion on the new ‘heart’ feature of Twitter and the ‘reactions’ of Facebook! Get in touch via Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram or email – you could even give us a heart…