Twitter users made it pretty clear last week. A puffy red heart isn’t always the best way to favourite/like/star/bookmark/acknowledge tweets. Maybe Twitter is listening: It is reportedly testing the ability to select different emoji.
The Verge reports that some users like @_Ninji have accessed a developer version of the Twitter app where there are three screens of emoji options in addition to the heart itself. So yes, you might be able to “sob face” instead of “loving” something you really didn’t like that much. The screenshots posted don’t seem to show how the emojis are displayed, though.
I can’t believe they’re finally letting me 💯 tweets
(The best part is that it’s not even a joke, I just found this…) pic.twitter.com/cyJ6Lmfhgx— Ninji (has moved) (@_Ninji) November 16, 2015
I love how the unfinished Twitter emoji favourites feature lets you 💩 tweets. Bet I’m gonna get a lot of those pic.twitter.com/EimC2komja
— Ninji (has moved) (@_Ninji) November 16, 2015
If this is for real, this interaction would make Twitter’s favoriting system similar to the way Slack allows any emoji to be appended as a reaction, although there doesn’t seem to be a way to add more than one reaction emoji yet. Twitter has not responded to additional questions about the heart or bringing back the star but they did send this comment to Verge writer Casey Newton:
https://twitter.com/CaseyNewton/status/666356368299790338
So there you have it.