From Twitter To X?

It appears that Elon Musk has come up with yet another bizarre decision. Sometime last week, Twitter underwent a name and logo change. Now, name changes aren't anything new in the world we inhabit. Facebook became Meta. Bruce Jenner became Caitlyn Jenner. In 1993, Prince became... well, you get the idea. Nothing to blink at.

Bye bye, birdy.

What's surprising, at least to me, is the what. From an internationally known moniker, the app has changed to a relatively generic X. The cute and tasteful blue bird that has served as the app's logo for more than a decade, is now a stylized and, dare I say, uninteresting "X". Now, not being a tech billionaire and all, nobody really cares about my opinion, and nor should they. I assume Elon Musk knows what he's doing... because I really don't. And I'm not entirely sure anyone else does either. Of all changes to take place, this stands out as a strange choice.

They call it a rebranding, but it really feels more like a debranding.

While I've never been a Twitter user, Twitter was such a mainstay of cyberspace that it was impossible for it to not be on my radar in some fashion. That's how strong its branding was. To throw that all away for a new but not altogether exciting image, seems counter-intuitive.

Burning questions!

Elon Musk has stated his desire to evolve Twitter into some kind of "Everthing App", just like WeChat. Something like that would require strong brand recognition as a foundation. Unfortunately, we live in a world where many things already share the name "X". And some of these things are distinctively pornographic in nature. Is that the kind of recognition that Elon Musk is going for? Somehow I doubt it.

Twitter's presence in not just cyberspace, but also Internet culture at large, has resulted in certain words being added to the lexicon. "Tweeting" is a verb which essentially means posting a message on Twitter. Now with the name change, what other changes could we see? Will Tweeting now be known as X-ing? Sounds uncomfortably violent.

Let me just do some X-ing...

Finally, of all the icons that Elon Musk could have gone with, why this one? I called it "relatively generic" earlier. I was being kind. It's boring. It's tepid. It says nothing about what the platform does. This could be deliberate. Musk could have some big plans for the app, and perhaps this generic quality is meant to avoid painting the app into a corner.

In Conclusion

With Meta's Threads encountering a bit of a downturn in recent weeks, this looked like a good time for Twitter to recover. Looks like it's not to be.

Still, it's going to be interesting seeing the two platforms taking turns to flounder. Definitely way more interesting than seeing one platform dominate. Let's hope that this does not lead to Elon Musk going from X owner to ex-owner. (hur hur)

Kick some X, Elon Musk!
T___T