SAN FRANCISCO (REUTERS) - Twitter Inc has replaced its star-shaped "favourite" icon with a heart-shaped icon called "like".

"You might like a lot of things, but not everything can be your favourite," Twitter said in a blog post on Tuesday (Nov 3). "We know that at times the star could be confusing, especially to newcomers."

Bloomberg News noted that Twitter Inc investor Chris Sacca asked for the change back in June. The influential Lowercase Capital LLC founder was an early investor in the social- media company and wrote a blog post outlining his solutions for the problems he saw at Twitter.

In it, he argued that using hearts instead of stars "would directly encourage more posting and more frequent visits to Twitter".

Twitter says the switch will make the site easier to use, since the star could be confusing to new users.

Twitter did not mention its rivals or Sacca as the reason for its change, instead saying that hearts are already popular on its Periscope live video-streaming application.

It is making the change a few weeks after reinstating co-founder Jack Dorsey as chief executive officer.

Dorsey has vowed to improve Twitter's product to attract a broader set of users. The San Francisco-based company is considering several other modifications, including extending the 140-character limit on Tweets.