<div><strong>By Mala Bhargava</strong></div><div> </div><div>It’s barely the size of an ant, but it’s kicked off a loud protest. Twitter has sneaked in a little change taking users off-guard as it banished the little star that meant a tweet was a favourite and replaced it with a red heart which one supposes means you love what the poster said.</div><div><br>None of the two icons really fit the conversations on Twitter. The star was mostly used when users couldn’t think of anything in particular to say but roughly agreed with a tweet, or even when they wanted to signal having read the tweet. Now and then, of course, the star also meant wholehearted approval.</div><div><br>Now the heart actually goes beyond favouriting a tweet and even beyond pressing the Like button on Facebook because it seems to only mean you really like what has been tweeted.</div><div><br>The differences here may be subtle, but Twitter users reacted with outrage over the change. Perhaps it is just the fact of the change – in today’s age of social media, a company barely owns its own logo or other visual symbols. This was brought home quite forcefully very early in the use of social media in 2010 when the clothing brand GAP suddenly sprouted a new logo and splashed it about online. It was supposed to be a modernized logo and far more trendy than was being used all that while. But oh the backlash. The online world all but went berserk protesting against the new logo. The situation was made far worse by a bit of arrogance on the part of GAP’s social media team who tried to deliver a sound rap on the knuckles to the company’s fans, telling them they had every right to change their logo. That only enraged the crowd even more and very soon GAP logo generating games apps went up on websites rudely called “CRAP logo generator” and the backlash got fairly viscous. Eventually, GAP rolled back its logo and was duly humbled by the whole experience. The lesson from this fiasco was quite clear: No, a company does not own its logo any longer. Customers do.</div><div><br>When it comes to Twitter, the micro-blogging site has actually grown up more in the hands of its users than in the company’s own. There was no clear vision when it was launched and it was almost a serendipitous product. Users went ahead and took it where they wanted, giving it a language, rules, and even its now-famous hashtag. Most of the initial users are still very much on Twitter and have always reacted with indignation when changes have been made to the site or app. By and large, everyone understands the need for Twitter to get in revenue, so many of the direct measures made towards that end are tolerated without more than a weak protest. But the star was a “user thing” and didn’t seem directly related to ad revenue. It also seemed to be like a mimicking of Facebook’s Like. That annoyed users even more and all day a #TwitterHeart hashtag trended with users making unkind jokes about the whole business.</div><div><br>Heart or star, neither will eventually be the tipping point for Twitter in its struggle to get more users and keep its investors happy against a backdrop of falling stock price.</div>
