Ah Twitter. The giant social media bird that we all know, and love (most of the time). Since 2006, many of us have found ourselves escaping in to the world of twitter in order to share with the world what we have to say… After all, what sandwich you had for lunch today was important news, right?! But does it always go as smoothly as we had planned? I’m sure you too have at some point experienced the pain of accidentally favouriting a tweet or following someone who you didn’t mean to. Pft, no biggie right? Yeah.. I wish that was always the case.

Twitter introduced the option to favourite a tweet in order to offer it’s users an alternative to a Facebook ‘like’. Twitter actually has it’s own glossary (yeah, I wasn’t aware either) and instructs users to ‘Tap the star icon to favourite a Tweet and the author will see that you liked it.’ The favourite really had it’s time to shine when Twitter added ‘Reply’ and ‘Retweet’ buttons below tweets in 2013, which encouraged users to further engage with tweets, without too much complication.

Why do we favourite tweets?

It’s all well and good having a favourite button, and I have to admit, the little yellow star does look pretty, but what do we actually use it for? A favourite can mean anything from ‘Hey, I like your tweet’, to ‘This conversation is over, but I don’t want to seem rude and ignore you’ or even ‘SEE MY NOTIFICATION. NOTICE ME.’, not that I would know about any of that of course.

From a Digital marketing perspective, accidentally favouriting tweets can be risky. We all know how random the content that is presented to us on our timelines can be, and the last thing you want to do is accidentally favourite something inappropriate for a professional account. I’m not sure an accidental favourite of an offensive tweet quite deserves a social media panic plan to be launched, but It’s definitely best to un-favourite it as quickly as possible, and just really hope that nobody noticed.

How do we even manage to accidentally favourite something?

Well, it seems to me that the main culprit of the crime is ‘fat thumbs’. Thanks to Twitter’s Smartphone mobile app, we can interact with things from our Timeline, just as easily as we can scroll down the page. This however, can sometimes cause issues. One mis-aim of the thumb and the game’s over… This isn’t as bad if it was a recent tweet, but many of us are self confessed Social media nosies, taking to our social media accounts day in, day out to see what our old neighbours or that colleague from the corner at work are really like in the outside world. Immediately after the favourite button is pressed, a notification is sent, and the panic sets in. Damn you fat thumbs..

Now what do you do?

Now the deed is done, it’s time to decide. It is okay to leave the house in case you see your Twitter victim? Are you still going to be accepted by society? It seems there are many suggested options and solutions after Twitter crimes. One of which apparently includes moving to Africa..

 

But at the end of the day, is it really all that bad?

If it’s something we all find ourselves doing, even if it’s only occasionally, then why is it seen as such a big slip up? Maybe it’s best to just take a light-hearted approach to your rookie errors, and instead make it known that you’re aware of your slip up. Why not just turn it in to a joke? (It can be rather funny, for everyone else anyway). As my Grandad always used to say, make the best out of a bad situation. #PreachIt.

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