Taxonomy of Twitter Favorites

13 thoughts
last posted Oct. 27, 2014, 10:13 p.m.
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I use Twitter favorites with a variety of different meanings and I'm sure others do too, so I thought I'd start cataloging some of the meanings I've used and seen others use.

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Incidentally, my favoriting has accelerated in recent months:

2007     3
2008     7
2009    45
2010    16
2011    33
2012   276
2013   636
2014  1972 (as of mid-September!)

(given the script I used, the year refers to year of tweet not year I favorited it)

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The core "I liked this tweet (maybe it made me laugh or I found it informative) and I want the author to know that".

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The bookmark meaning: "This tweet has something I may want to refer to later".

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A secondary bookmark meaning: "This tweet has a link I don't have the time (or suitable device with which) to click right now."

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The "thanks for mentioning me" meaning, which I mostly picked up from Marc Andreesen.

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The encouraging "do more of this" favorite.

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The "conversation has come to a natural conclusion and I want to acknowledge your last tweet without adding anything more to the conversation" favorite.

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The "just reminding you I exist" sub-favorite.

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The "I hope they notice me and follow me" sub-favorite.

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The "noticeably not favoriting this, despite the fact I'm clearly favoriting other stuff around it" non-favorite.

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The "lightweight thanks" favorite.

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The "I'm using a favorite bot and it doesn't mean anything, I just want to see if I can get more followers." favorite (suggested by Simeon Visser)