"星を投げ合う" in the context of the Internet

Question

The link is down right now for non-Japanese users, but the song Social Network(そーしゃるねっとわーく) has these lyrics in it:

好きな時に電源を入れて　誰かの文字列を覗き込む

星を投げ合うだけくらいが心地良い　僕のもうひとつの “部屋” 秘密の場所

It's pretty obvious what they're talking about for the most part, but "星を投げ合う" confuses me. I do know that this song was published back when "likes" on Twitter were represented by stars, so I was thinking maybe that has something to do with it.

Does anybody know if likes were ever referred to as "星," or am I on the wrong track?

Answer 1

Yes, back in the days favorites on twitter was referred to as 星. This blog post -- 「いいね」のサムズアップ感をTwitterに持ち込むということ - うらがみらいぶらり -- writes up the author's sentiments on the change to :hearts:. It reads:

だが少なくとも「ふぁぼ」と呼び、「ふぁぼれよ」ということばが通じ、星を投げ合うような文化圏は、やはり世界全体で見れば少数派には違いない。

"ふぁぼ-る" as a verb was also commonly used when the function was called favorites rather than likes, and formed a kind of culture.

「いいね」, you mentioned, is a newer term introduced when Twitter took our stars away and started calling them "like"s.