One of the great features of micro.blog is the ‘forced interaction’ it encourages. Unlike some other systems where it’s encouraged to add a heart, star, thumb, etc to a post even if not read, micro.blog nudges you in the direction of communicating with the other person.
Let’s talk about the Favorites feature in micro.blog. With micro.blog gathering steam regarding users, it might be time to change this feature to avoid potential confusion for users coming from these other platforms.
Purpose of the Favorite Feature
To allow a reader to save a post to a separate list within their own micro.blog account. This has no effect on the person who posted the content, and they have no way of knowing if their content was favorited.
Potential Option 1
Merely remove the feature altogether? The user would then need to find some other way to collect these posts they are saving. This is not ideal since it takes you out of the system and makes for replying later tricky.
Potential Option 2
Renaming the feature? Using some other term that more accurately implies the purpose of the feature. Giving the user the sense that clicking this will allow you to bookmark it for later rather than clicking this will push out any kind of notification.
I personally use the favorite feature as a way to collect posts that I want to come back to for any number of reasons: reading later, something I want to write a more in-depth reply to, something nice someone said that I want to look back on, etc. I have no idea what the adoption and usage look like for Favorites within micro.blog, but I do find the concept and implementation of such a feature to be useful personally.
I am sure there are a TON of great ideas out there from the community. What are your thoughts on Favorites?