Twitter is killing off 'favorites' and instead wants you to 'like' tweets with hearts

Twitter is renaming its "favorites" feature to "likes," and users are now going to be able to "like" tweets by tapping a heart.

Previously, Twitter let users show they enjoyed a tweet by selecting a star icon. But that's all changing today. Now, you show you liked a tweet by tapping a heart.

Twitter has been testing out this feature for months. Back in June some users of Twitter's Android and iOS apps spotted that it had changed the star icon to a heart. Twitter confirmed at the time that it was only running an experiment.

But now it's official: Favorites are now likes, and stars are now hearts, according to an emailed press release. The change is going to be rolled out in the Twitter app, on the Twitter website, and also on TweetDeck.

In the press release, Twitter says a heart is a "universal symbol that resonates across languages, cultures, and time zones." Twitter says a heart is "more expressive" than a favorite, as the graphic below, which shows what the hearts will look like, attempts to indicate:

Twitter is also going to update the Vine app to unify the way likes look. Right now when you like a Vine video you hit a smiley face. But Twitter says that's going to change to a heart, just like the Twitter app. That's going to bring Twitter and Vine in line with video-streaming app Periscope, which uses hearts to show how much people like different streams.