Twitter's decision to change its stars button to hearts is likely to be the most controversial decision made by the company, but according to Twitter, the change is actually a lot more popular than people may think.

Speaking at the Open Mobil Summit press conference in San Francisco on Tuesday, Twitter's product Chief Kevin Weil said the company has already seen increased in engagement since making the change last week.

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According to Weil, the company saw an increase of 6% more hearts and 6% more likes on Twitter than they saw on 'Favorites'. Weil added that there were lots of 'Favorites' last week and moving that number to 6% is a huge leap. He noted that the number of new users is even greater and also new users engagement has increased to 9%.

The company's decision to change the actual symbol itself, however, took them a little more work. According to Twitter's Product Manager Akarshan Kumar they know that at times the star could be confusing, especially to newcomers of their website.

According to Weil, heart is easier to recognize and makes Twitter more accessible to more people. Weil states that the heart is a very universal symbol and it is a much more inclusive symbol. He explained that are only a few things that are users 'Favorites', but people can like lots of things. People just understand it better.

Weil explained that the changes was just one way company was thinking of how to make Twitter much easier to understand for more people. He noted that there are other new features such as Moments, which has helped close what he described as the gap between brand awareness and usage.

For users who really do not like the new 'Heart' button, there is a Chrome extension that can bring back the original star icon when user is on Twitter's website.

TagsTwitter update, San Francisco, open mobil summit, Kevin Weil