Twitter and his search

Recently, Twitter has changed its search icon to hashtag in the web version. This was not the best solution.

• Changing the icon to another one is always difficult — you have to get used to it, especially if the changes take place in a social network with a billion users.
• Search in all interfaces has long time been associated with a magnifying glass icon, so changing the icon to something else for the sake of individualism is not cool.

But Twitter had another reason. Initially, the homepage was always arranged in chronological order and showed tweets only from those to whom the user is subscribed. Then Twitter decided to use the algorithms, but users didn't like it and they started to switch the feed back to the chronological order.

Twitter decided to create a second feed and put it on the search menu, as it's now in Instagram. So there is no longer a search menu, and the search string became part of the new feed, that' s why Twitter decided to change the icon. But users still associate this menu not with hashtags or the second tape, and with the search, so the experiment failed.

But at the same time, Twitter still has a separate search menu on each page, so it looks logical only to choose: the tape of interest or the menu with the search — do not interfere.

Now they have done the following: on the wide screens, where there are icons with signatures, the search is signed by the word and marked with a hashtag icon, and on narrow screens, where there are no signatures, the icon changes to a magnifying glass. But between these two states there is an intermediate one, where there are no signatures, but the icon is marked with a hashtag — it is confusing.