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Ask HN: Why is there no 'like' button on Twitter?

35 points by sw1205 ↗ HN
I was on Facebook the other day and updated my status, it was nothing dramatic - just congratulations Ellie on the baby'. I could have just as easily updated this status on Twitter.

Around 4 hours later I logged into Facebook and to my amazement 9 people had liked my status. They didn't comment but were clearly happy that Ellie had had the baby and felt compelled 'to like'.

This got me to thinking - why is there not a 'like' button on Twitter. I know you can Retweet but some of the friends who liked my status have a different set of friends to me and so if they would have posted the news on their Facebook stream it would have meant nothing to anybody.

The amount of times I see good news on Twitter and think 'yeah that is cool' if I see it on Facebook I can like it and that person (however sad this may be) is pleased because they have brightened up someones day.

If Twitter introduced 'like' I would use it. Would you?

57 comments

[ 36.7 ms ] story [ 531 ms ] thread
pclark
No.
sw1205
I appreciate that it is not for everyone, but given how many people use the Facebook like functionality do you think that this could not carry over to Twitter and be equally effective?
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RBerenguel
Probably no. Twitter is good as it is: a mean of comunication
sw1205
The Facebook Status and the Twitter status are fundamentally the same thing. You are telling the world what is on your mind. The like functionality in Facebook is a means of communication - someone clicks like and says I like your opinion on this, your good news, your joke, the fact you are in a good mood.

Now if Twitter has the same status functionality could 'like' not be equally effective?

rmc
From a technical point of view they are the same thing, both are short 'status' updates.

However they are used in different ways, by different users for different things. People mostly use twitter as a 'microblog'. It's like a blog, but each 'blog post' is limited to be very small. People use Facebook status updates to tell people what they are doing and to tell their friends things. If I see your facebook updates, you can see mine. Twitter is not like that. Facebook is for socializing, twitter is like newspapers. They are different, ergo it doesn't make sense to make them identical

brc
I don't really agree with you as many of my friends feed their twitter to facebook - I assume there is some kind of app for this. Thus many facebook status updates are actually tweets. So many of the end users see tweets and status updates as the same thing. Facebook just needs to come up with a snappy verb for it.
rmc
Yes many of my friends feed their twitter straight to Facebook aswell. It's quite annoying to me. There is a Facebook app to do it. There's another facebook app that will only update your facebook if your tweet contains "#fb", which is a much better way
gaius
The twitter analogue is the "re-tweet" which IMHO is pretty obnoxious; your stream gets clogged with your friends RT'ing things about people you've a) never heard of and b) if you had and you cared, you'd just follow them yourself.

Twitter at scale is a one-way "write only" medium.

jmonegro
How would you know if you cared, if you didn't know about them?

Besides, if there were a "like" button, it'd have the same effect since it would most likely show up in your timeline. A private "like" button? They have that as "favorite".

Ultimately, the re-tweet makes it easier to discover new people within your network. If you're into design, and you're following other designers, chances are they're following other great designers, and you can find about these other people through the re-tweet.

I'd say it's an (accidental) feature that was very important for twitter's success, and it's further validated by the fact that the re-tweet was brought upon by the users themselves.

gaius
Why would you care what someone you've never met's having for breakfast? Unless they were a famous chef maybe.

Likes on FB don't show on the newsfeed, only the person whose thing you liked gets a notification.

lovskogen
I only RT tweets related to my work, which is interactive design, gui, webdev . People following you that doesn't know you in person, probably follows you because of the stuff you do (work) not who you are (personal). This is proper use of RT, in my opinion.

Tagging a tweet as 'fav' doesn't show as clear as FBs like button. And it's more for saving good tweets, not sending 'I like this'.

Likes shouldn't come up in your timeline. This is Twitter, not FB. There is room for this functionality, but it's not there.

So for now, just @-reply and tell the persons in person, instead of a like-click. Gives more value.

gaius
Looks like I've offended some twittards, lol
lsc
>Twitter at scale is a "write only" medium.

only because the 'older tweets are currently unavailable' message when you search for stuff. Usually the search isn't completely broken; you get the last page of stuff you are searching for.

either way, search is the only sane way to use twitter... otherwise it's like the facebook wall- impossible to keep up with and full of crap.

noarchy
Many re-tweets look like unreadable garbage to me, since people are often using URL shorteners in tweets that otherwise contain little else in the way of content. I tend to ignore long streams of such links, but maybe that's just me. Then again, I still don't think that I "get" Twitter.
swah
The RTs I see are often very insightful and tell me which people I should be following. Also, RT are probably more insightful on average because at least two people found it worth saying.

Now what has been bothering me are unfunny "OH"s, which don't even mention an author...

fragmede
re-tweet is even more obnoxious if you're searching a hashtag - the same thing shows up multiple times.
mootothemax
Twitter does have this functionality - it's called a ReTweet. Terminology differs, but it's essentially the same thing - both likes and retweets show up in the user's timelines, and both indicate liking what someone else has said.
sw1205
If I like something in Facebook then only the person who's status it is sees that like. It does not appear in my stream to all my friends. If I RT something on Twitter then I am saying that I want all my followers to see this status. I don't want that, I just want to tell someone that I like their status without involving all my followers.
stuhacking
I think you're worrying too much about flooding your followers' timelines with spam. However, this is actually the point of twitter and I think it handles it pretty well.

Your followers probably follow you because your tweets are interesting to them. If you see something that you find interesting then chances are good that at least some of your followers will agree. Some followers may have seen it from the original source; others may only get it from your retweet.

adrianoconnor
What about the little 'favourite star'? Surely that achieves the exact same thing ultimately?. I think, but I can't remember for sure, that the number of times a tweet has been favourited is returned by the api, so clients could show it if they wanted.

FWIW, I do not personally like the 'Like' button in Facebook at all. The most banal things get 'liked' which totally devalues it. A 'Does not like' button would have been more interesting :)

sw1205
Yes a dislike button is a must! I thought the star was me favouriting a tweet. I can see it but the person who's tweet is can't see that I have done that. I could be wrong though and like you say Facebook like is not for everyone anyway.
kristiandupont
The dislike button has been suggested many times (and I think I have even seen fb groups demanding one). I think the reason they don't implement it is quite simple: it would damage the feel-good atmosphere. Imagine downvotes on new profile pictures or excited status updates.
notahacker
Imagine if "Dislikes" exceeded "Likes" of a particular marketing campaign...
abiczo
What about the little 'favourite star'? Surely that achieves the exact same thing ultimately?

The favorite button in it's current form is more like a bookmark button in my opinion. What's missing is that can't see who favorited a tweet.

In our (web-based) client we implemented this missing funcionality, renamed the button to "Like" and it works pretty well, it's being used a lot.

I think, but I can't remember for sure, that the number of times a tweet has been favourited is returned by the api, so clients could show it if they wanted.

No, it's not returned unfortunately.

rick_2047
I don't understand your line of thinking. I agree that facebook status and twitter are essentially the same thing (and the same level of useless), but if you like one particular feature of one site why not just use that site and not the other site. If twitter keeps on replicating the same things fb does then why do we have two different websites.
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points
I think what you're finding is that facebook is far better for 'personal 2 way communication', whilst twitter is better for mass announcement.

It's a different scale of working. FWIW, I much prefer facebook, especially for things like family announcements.

glhaynes
Well said. After struggling to "get" Twitter for a while, I've realized that I don't have to post on it. It's essentially a read-only medium for me.

That's fine: I post on Facebook a lot and really enjoy the conversations there, but I don't like to post on Twitter because its conversation capabilities aren't great and, equally importantly, I don't have an audience! I'm not famous and most of the non-spam followers I have on Twitter are also Facebook friends. (Also, I personally really don't enjoy having to deal with the 140 character limit.) It's still really useful to me similarly to how many other web forums on which I'm primarily a lurker are useful.

justinxreese
Why? Because Twitter is not Facebook. Why do they need to have the same features?
sw1205
They don't. However Facebook felt the need to borrow Twitters @replies (http://mashable.com/2009/09/10/facebook-mentions/) so why can't Twitter borrow the Facebook like.

Yes they are different sites and yes they serve different purposes. However if functionality can work on both and can aid the users of that site then why should it not be introuced - just because you can already do it on one is not a good enough reason. If it was then you would not see competitors coming out daily with new sites that do what existing sites do but try and better it.

Twitter has millions of users who do not have a Facebook account and vice-versa. Providing they don't move too much from what makes them unique then giving their user base useful features can only be a good thing.

justinxreese
I'm not saying that they can't do it just because Facebook already has, I'm more saying that they don't have to just because Facebook does. Otherwise, every move they make would be to become more like Facebook. And that isn't the desirable outcome. They are unique pieces of software to provide unique needs. Twitter wants to forge its own identity and create its own features, not point at every Facebook feature and say "Okay, how can we do that?".
sw1205
Sorry I misunderstood your point - you are right they don't have to. We don't want two sites doing the same thing. I think Twitter is doing a good job forging it's own identity, it is Facebook that seems to be borrowing ideas from everywhere else - Foursquare etc. I do think however that 'like' could be useful for Twitter and they could implement it in a different way. I take your point though.
tomstuart
A lot of people treat the favourite button (star) as "like". Unfortunately neither Twitter's web interface nor its API expose this data in a very useful way, so it only really has an effect if the like-ee is using a sufficiently thick native client or a third-party site like http://favstar.fm/ to keep track of who's faved their tweets.
spinchange
Actually, favorites on twitter have their own API stream now. Sites like favstar now update in near real-time and you can get instant "fav" notifications from iPhone notification apps like Boxcar.
jdavid
i use the favorite star as a bookmark. i wish twitter had more gestures.
jakevoytko
Twitter and Facebook look at value in orthogonal directions.

On Facebook, the importance of every post is dictated by how much interaction it generates. This is very visible: comments and Likes are listed on every post. In a hurry, you can decide a post's value by how many people have already interacted. Liking a post keeps the interaction within the OP's profile page. By scrolling through someone's profile, you get a feel for how popular they are within the service.

On the other hand, the value of a Tweet is proportional to the number of people who see it. This is sometimes difficult to guess when inspecting the original tweet, since Twitter does not track old-style Retweets. It doesn't matter though, since your message is broadcast to dozens (or hundreds, or thousands) of people you didn't reach by yourself. The threshold of quality is a little higher with a Retweet: in a sense, you must be willing to say the original Tweet yourself. But a popular Tweet can reach more people than a good Facebook post.

bond
Amazing, I've been thinking about it for the past few days and i feel it would be good to have a "like" button but maintained inside the twitter ecosystem.

With that we could build some kind of rating system to show the most liked or influential tweets around...

sw1205
I totally agree. This could then lead itself to an improved likestream which could then take on Digg seriously.
petervandijck
I have the feeling Facebook's leadership is dramatically pragmatic: if it works, let's use it. They borrow ideas from lots of people, "like" came from friendfeed I believe? And Twitter's leadership seems more, how shall I say it, more interested in doing it "right" or taking the high road in terms of features. They have stayed extremely minimal for such a popular service, in terms of features.

They could add "like", which would surely add value, but then again they could also add a dozen other features that add value. But in doing that, they'd dilute their simple value proposition: real time updates.

Whether laser-focusing on 1 feature/value is smarter than adding other features and having a more complete offering is smart, only time will tell, I'm really not sure at this point.

sw1205
Really fair set of comments. At times Facebook can feel like one big bolt on and twitter have done well to avoid that. I just wondered why when a feature as big as Facebook Like could work on Twitter why (if it hasn't already been) it has not been considered.
smackfu
Even HN has "like"!

Well, it's an up-arrow, but it still servers the same point: to allow you to support a comment without requiring a low-signal comment to do so.

OTOH, twitter isn't exactly high-signal in the first place.

dolinsky
I would counter (this is not my original idea but I highly subscribe to it) that HN's up-arrow serves a dual-purpose...'liking' an article and 'bookmarking' it for later. There's no other way I can see to explain how articles get 40+ votes on the homepage but only have 5-10 comments on them. If PG would simply add a 'read it later' style link/button to stories, up-arrows would retain their 'like this' purpose and I believe the homepage would have 'better' content on it.

I'm guilty of this myself.... I very often will click an up-arrow if I'm viewing the feed and don't have time to open up an individual article so i can use my instapaper bookmarklet on it.

rriepe
"Like" seems pretty limited on Twitter.

News spreads on Twitter, and most of it you can't really "like" without looking like some kind of sociopath.

Tweets are also short enough to immediately show their relevance. In theory, anything that's retweeted should show its value at a glance, whether it's funny, interesting or tragic.

chopsueyar
Why stop at Twitter?

Why can't Hacker News have a like button for 'Ask HN' posts?

I don't really want to upvote this post, nor write a text-based reply communicating my feelings. Instead, I want to push a 'Like' button.

Conversely, why is there no 'Dislike' or 'Hate' button on Facebook?

jamesk2
Facebook has said that they don't want to put in features that would discourage participation. If someone updates their status and lots of people "dislike" it, they might not want to update their status next time.

For HN, I'd like to see a "track it" button - I don't want to upvote a lame article but often the HN community has a lot of interesting things to say so I'd like to keep track of those article's conversations.

jokermatt999
I use Buzz, which does have a like button. Twitter has the people, but it seems so primitive when you look at Buzz instead. Yes, I know its simplicity is part of its charm, but you shouldn't need URL shorteners to share a link and 3rd party clients just to be able to use the website easily (Just try following a conversation on the main site).

I highly recommend Buzz as an alternative, if you can convince your friends to switch over too.

vjk2005
The 'Retweet' button is Twitter's version of the Like Button, and it is for this reason they have disabled the ability to edit the tweet so as to mimic the 'single-click' behavior of Like buttons.
random42
Retweeting, even though does not mean the same thing, in practice works pretty close to "like" in twitter ecosystem.
JoelMcCracken
I don't want the feature.

Twitter and Facebook are different things. Facebook is for sharing things that are important to me as a person, whereas Twitter is about consuming and sharing information that is important to me as a professional.

wolfrom
While the retweet button is similar to like (my co-founder and I actually discussed this the day before), I do think that a Twitter Like button may come along eventually. In fact, I think it's even possible for an upstart Twitter client to decide (on its own or with some of the other clients) to implement a Like button protocol, in the hopes that Twitter would eventually adopt it.

Like buttons are great for monetization, so I think it could make sense for Twitter.

TimH
The fav feature is the like button. You can see your most popular tweets at http://favstar.fm/users/<yourtwittername>;

From there click on the recent button to see what tweets of yours were recently faved, or the given button to see what you have faved.

I've recently started integrating RT tracking too, as tech tweeters do tend to use RT more than likes.

If you log into http://favstar.fm once, it will start collecting favs and RTs you give and receive almost instantly. Otherwise it collects them more slowly using twitter's REST api.

pat-mcnally
A few of us have been interested in providing this feature on Twitter as part of more general effort in social sentiment (it's just a "is this anything?" project at this point). We see the similarity between 'Retweet' and 'Like' - however, we think the presence of a 'Dislike' would somewhat segregate what a 'Retweet' vs. a 'Like' is for.

You can see the most recent result of efforts in this 30 second YouTube video. It demonstrates where we are with a browser plugin to add 'Like' and 'Dislike' to every tweet viewed on Twitter.com: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QlZVBCSXsK8

Would love to hear your thoughts on it.

The more underlying sentiment "gathering and storing" system can be found at: http://upprdwnr.com

DieLaughing
It seems like if you haven't been on Twitter since 2007, you don't know what the hell you are talking about.

Favorite == Like