Twitter favorites: Pesky little stars with multiple meanings

How do you use Twitter’s “favorite” function?

This question arose from an @ discussion with my good friend and colleague Dr. Carrie Brown-Smith (@Brizzyc), an avid Twitterer and amazing curator of media-related content. She uses the function as a bookmark tool, a way to save tweets for later curation.

As with most of Twitter’s functionality, the simple little star is used in myriad ways by different constituencies. It’s part of the flexible but sometimes frustrating nature of Twitter.

Much to her consternation, some people were interpreting her star as an endorsement, the Twitter equivalent of a “like” button.

Part of this interpretation arises from Twitter’s own explanation (emphasis added):

Favorites, represented by a small star icon next to a Tweet, are most commonly used when users like a Tweet and wish to save it for later.

An entire subculture has developed around the stars-as-likes interpretation. A couple of years ago, @textism created a site called Favrd.com, which tallied up which tweets had garnered the most stars. Most of these were humorous tweets from the likes of now-famous tweeters such as @badbanana and @arjunbasu.

Though @textism has closed Favrd, other sites such as Favstar.fm have picked up the mantle, and the stars-as-likes interpretation has flourished.

For Carrie, the habit has become favorite-as-bookmarking. For me, I began using the function as a “like” button, in part because I goofed around with Favrd. If I want to save something, I bookmark the links through Instapaper and StumbleUpon, or take a screenshot of a particular tweet. But those are just my habits, my work flow.

Just as I don’t try to prescribe how people should use Twitter, I try to avoid overinterpreting favorites, especially from followers who are only acquaintances. So thanking someone for a star isn’t always appropriate.

Carrie had something even more annoying happen: Someone noticed she had starred a tweet with an article link. That person then retweeted the tweet as being from @Brizzyc. The offending retweeter also quoted a portion of the article in the retweet that Carrie would not have highlighted.

Stars can have multiple meanings, but an RT doesn’t. It’s “this is exactly what the original tweet said.” If you have to change any of it, attribute at the end using via. Otherwise, Twitter’s flexibility does indeed become frustration — and even worse, futility.

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