He tried to make PayPal use the x.com brand after the merger too. The guys obsessed with using that domain. I'd maybe focus on getting that 50% of advertiser revenue back if I were him, but I...
He tried to make PayPal use the x.com brand after the merger too. The guys obsessed with using that domain.
I'd maybe focus on getting that 50% of advertiser revenue back if I were him, but I guess investing heavily in a rebrand is the way to go. It's just like my days at student radio, every two years a different committee would take over and decide to do a rebrand. Instead of doing hard but productive stuff like focusing on adding new opportunities it's a lot easier to just bikeshed and tinker with branding.
There’s also SpaceX, the Tesla Model X, even his own son’s first name is X. What a cool letter. Super cool. Nothing says edgy sci-fi hackerman like the letter X.
There’s also SpaceX, the Tesla Model X, even his own son’s first name is X. What a cool letter. Super cool. Nothing says edgy sci-fi hackerman like the letter X.
Doing a rebrand is easy. You spend some money on a new look, create some updated core values you say you're going to abide by and then put up a new charter. At this point he's just changing the...
Doing a rebrand is easy. You spend some money on a new look, create some updated core values you say you're going to abide by and then put up a new charter.
At this point he's just changing the turd's jacket, but it's still a turd.
If he doesn't stop the money haemorrhage and bring in some other revenue streams, Twitter is done for.
Isn't there a conspiracy theory that the Saudis paid him to purposefully ruin the platform because of its potential to bring about social justice (e.g the arab spring happened via Twiiter)? I...
Isn't there a conspiracy theory that the Saudis paid him to purposefully ruin the platform because of its potential to bring about social justice (e.g the arab spring happened via Twiiter)? I think he openly received a bunch of money from a saudi prince around the time he acquired twitter, and was at the qatar world cup
I mean like most conspiracy theories that one’s fun to think about, but if that were true why wouldn’t he buy it and then just shut it down? It doesn’t make any sense why he would slowly squeeze...
I mean like most conspiracy theories that one’s fun to think about, but if that were true why wouldn’t he buy it and then just shut it down? It doesn’t make any sense why he would slowly squeeze the life out of it like this.
When discussing such thoughts, it's important to always keep Hanlon's Razor in mind. And Musk has historically shown gross incompetence in all areas of life, he's essentially rich-by-accident and...
When discussing such thoughts, it's important to always keep Hanlon's Razor in mind.
And Musk has historically shown gross incompetence in all areas of life, he's essentially rich-by-accident and rich-inspite-of-his-efforts, so it doesn't make sense to attribute malice.
Nah.... He's a moron. He just happens to have the capital to build his own Truth Social. Until he doesn't. It's so weird to know this guy has pissed away 2/3rds of his fortune, and is still a...
Nah.... He's a moron. He just happens to have the capital to build his own Truth Social.
Until he doesn't.
It's so weird to know this guy has pissed away 2/3rds of his fortune, and is still a hundred billionaire.
I think it's been said on this site before, but I'll say it too. I might be very cynical but part of me believes this really is intentional sabotaging on musks part. This is very conspiracy theory...
I think it's been said on this site before, but I'll say it too. I might be very cynical but part of me believes this really is intentional sabotaging on musks part. This is very conspiracy theory crackpot america centric talk but the countries slow descent into fascist corporatocracy is something musk takes part in, having previously declared himself to be voting for Republicans in future elections back in 2022.
Then he up and buys Twitter, a major social media network that I personally think was crucial to the 2020 election and 2022 midterm(to a lesser extent) having the turnout they did. It was a great way to try and mobilize younger voters and try and show them why they need to vote and rally them towards that cause. But now one of the richest men in the world who just switched his voting preferences on a whim bought a major social media network and is now tanking it. He's making seemingly all the wrong decisions, but what he's really doing is making Twitter an unuseable (rate limiting, culling all the staff leading to instability, other bad decisons) cesspit of misinformation(paying for verification), and breaking up a chunk of voting power by disrupting a major method of communication amongst younger folk. People who aren't super internet savvy might be on Twitter, but they likely won't go to Mastodon. And all the alternatives popping up inherently mean a divided online populace, which means less effective messaging. All of this with the next big election just around the corner, figuratively speaking. The timing is seemingly perfect.
All that having been said though, I do also realize that the world doesn't revolve exclusively around what goes on in my countries government. Elon is perfectly fine to believe what he wants to believe and vote how he likes, but I do not think one human being should be able to buy a major communication platform on a whim like this. It's too much power.
You are probably giving him too much credit. Even though you are right about all this, those are just unintended consequences off his actions. Consequently, twitter's importance is rapidly...
You are probably giving him too much credit. Even though you are right about all this, those are just unintended consequences off his actions. Consequently, twitter's importance is rapidly decreasing so people will probably move to chat services like whatsapp, signal, telegram etc but none of them are like twitter. Maybe Threads emerges as a clear winner. Who knows...
I just don't see it this way. Twitter was large enough to show there was a market, if Musk sabotages Twitter to the point of un-usability, it would be expected that someone would eventually make a...
I just don't see it this way. Twitter was large enough to show there was a market, if Musk sabotages Twitter to the point of un-usability, it would be expected that someone would eventually make a replacement. Sure, that replacement may not have a critical mass of users by the next US (or even UK) election, but that's an expensive option for a single election cycle.
Much more believable that Musk was stupider than he thought he was, and everything since has been a poor reaction to being forced into buying Twitter.
Nah, you’re not wrong. All that Elon had more than the average person was lots of money. Like, enough money that even with multiple bad decisions and a couple good ones he’s still stupid rich....
Nah, you’re not wrong.
All that Elon had more than the average person was lots of money. Like, enough money that even with multiple bad decisions and a couple good ones he’s still stupid rich.
You’d be just as successful in his position, regardless of if you’re smart or not.
Also horrible SEO for the name, I have been searching for opinions on the matter on different websites (including twitter) and it's incredibly hard to find results on any search box.
Also horrible SEO for the name, I have been searching for opinions on the matter on different websites (including twitter) and it's incredibly hard to find results on any search box.
Seriously, this just seems so crazy to me. For all its faults, Twitter’s branding has always seemed really good ? And X is such a.. nothing name. Like someone else mentioned, the SEO will be terrible.
Seriously, this just seems so crazy to me. For all its faults, Twitter’s branding has always seemed really good ? And X is such a.. nothing name. Like someone else mentioned, the SEO will be terrible.
It’s funny, because I don’t know if you’re talking about Twitter or Elon. Good to see the world finally wake up to billionaires in the last several years.
It’s funny, because I don’t know if you’re talking about Twitter or Elon.
Good to see the world finally wake up to billionaires in the last several years.
"Adieu to all the birds". If the "tweets" are the messages, wouldn't the "birds" be the users? It really seems to me at this point that killing Twitter is the desired goal.
"Adieu to all the birds". If the "tweets" are the messages, wouldn't the "birds" be the users? It really seems to me at this point that killing Twitter is the desired goal.
Right. It feels like this whole takeover of Twitter was just a fun game for him from the start. Like he was high with his buddies one night talking about how he has all the money in the world and...
Right. It feels like this whole takeover of Twitter was just a fun game for him from the start. Like he was high with his buddies one night talking about how he has all the money in the world and someone dared him to buy one of the world's biggest social media platforms and tank it.
If he wasn't so arrogant, that might make more sense. Instead, it's just blatantly obvious he thought he could do it better. Now that he's actually confronted with doing it better, he's throwing...
If he wasn't so arrogant, that might make more sense. Instead, it's just blatantly obvious he thought he could do it better. Now that he's actually confronted with doing it better, he's throwing stuff at the wall to see what sticks, thinking his dumb ideas are better when they are anywhere from non-consequential to disastrous. He's had great success at taking others' ideas and helping make them happen, but it makes him feel like he's the "brains", when that's just not the case.
The X-logo graphic he posted gives me "2010 Minecraft intro" vibes. Well, at least this change makes it easier to calls Mastodon/Threads/BlueSky posts tweets.
The X-logo graphic he posted gives me "2010 Minecraft intro" vibes.
Well, at least this change makes it easier to calls Mastodon/Threads/BlueSky posts tweets.
I'm glad to find someone else who hates companies stealing and ruining common words for their branding. It usually feels like nobody else cares. Remember when (non-German) people used to actually...
Exemplary
I'm glad to find someone else who hates companies stealing and ruining common words for their branding. It usually feels like nobody else cares.
Remember when (non-German) people used to actually use the word "uber?" Before all it meant was somebody's scummy profit operation? And sometime soon it might become awkward using the "meta" prefix, affecting many words at once... So many more words have had their souls sold without the consent of the populations who use those words. If a company is going to use common words in their branding, they should be required to use combinations of at least two words, or one unique/made up word if they really want to use just a single one. It screws up the language.
I'm aware I might sound slightly unhinged for caring this much about it, but I feel like I have to make up for how hardly anybody else seems bothered at all.
Maybe worse than that, even. Looks like early 2000s Excel to me. Nothing cooler than rebranding Twitter to look how a 40 year old spreadsheet app looked 20 years ago! Is the little trailer...
Maybe worse than that, even. Looks like early 2000s Excel to me. Nothing cooler than rebranding Twitter to look how a 40 year old spreadsheet app looked 20 years ago!
Is the little trailer formatted like a horror movie to make it clear to investors what to expect?
Surefire way to force businesses and media to cut the cord. Think of how many places the Twitter logo/name/branding is embedded around the web, TV, and in print. Hell if I would bother updating it...
Surefire way to force businesses and media to cut the cord. Think of how many places the Twitter logo/name/branding is embedded around the web, TV, and in print. Hell if I would bother updating it on my properties when it's been in jeopardy as a viable platform and a sinking ship since Musk took over. The guy is unhinged, maybe he'll feel like changing it again in another few weeks. Cut the cord now if you know what's best.
I was on Twitter fairly early (2008 or so) and it was a great place. Possibly because of the character limit (140 including links, even image links!). I'm not on anymore ofc. It's not a good place...
I was on Twitter fairly early (2008 or so) and it was a great place. Possibly because of the character limit (140 including links, even image links!).
I'm not on anymore ofc. It's not a good place to engage in anyway whatsoever, even just to post shitty thoughts, let alone payments or anything else!
But what does a rich guy do during their mid-life crisis? He couldn’t buy a fancy car, because he already has them, so instead he bought his favorite company for $44 billion. Despite his claims of protecting free speech and the public square, he seems to have had a deeper motivation: to return to the start-up years he felt nostalgic for.
Before Musk was Tesla’s Technoking and our collective Chief Twit, there was a period of a few years where he was just another guy trying to ride the dot-com boom to untold riches — and he imagined a “financial superstore” called X.com was his ticket.
But Musk never gave up on the idea. In 2017, he reacquired the X.com domain name and, according to Soni, he once pitched Reid Hoffman on the idea of reacquiring PayPal to revive his original vision. Since announcing his takeover of Twitter, he’s talked a lot about superapps and expanding into payments. The strategies Musk is pulling from those early years run much deeper, and it’s clear he hasn’t learned the lessons of his previous failures.
I'm convinced at this point even if he literally took the site offline, People would desperately try to refresh until it magically appeared again, cause no amount of stupidity or hostility is...
I'm convinced at this point even if he literally took the site offline, People would desperately try to refresh until it magically appeared again, cause no amount of stupidity or hostility is going to cause everyone to permanently drop twitter.
Nearly every creator, every journalist who has taken issue with Musk and the direction he has led it in still uses the site religiously, and aren't even active on the alternatives that have cropped up over the last two years or so. Every time Musk does something dumb, or hostile, everyone says "This" will be the thing that kills twitter. but at the end of the day, it is habit and addiction that keeps people there. I mean hell, his last move more or less walled lurkers off from even seeing the content inside, and yet the migration that spurred still didn't amount to much. People gave Threads a try and left, and Mastodon only had a slight bump in activity for like a week until people thought "You know what, I still would rather use the bird site than this."
Twitter definitely is an interesting case study in how much shit can you drag a site through before people permanently leave, and the answer is apparently a lot. And other platform holders are taking notice too. Spez from reddit even praised Musk for his cost cutting, and I think the enshitification we have seen throughout reddit, youtube and other platforms is a result of web hosts realizing they can treat their users like shit, and people will still use their site.
I think there is only so much you can blame enshitification on people like Musk or Spez when we are the ones encouraging their behavior by continuing to engage.
"In April, Twitter's legacy blue bird logo was temporarily replaced by Dogecoin's Shiba Inu dog, helping drive a surge in the cryptocurrency's market value." Really? I think I see why people think...
"In April, Twitter's legacy blue bird logo was temporarily replaced by Dogecoin's Shiba Inu dog, helping drive a surge in the cryptocurrency's market value."
Really? I think I see why people think Musk is a genius. Sometimes the stupidity of the general public just baffles me.
I think he knows that you will always have haters, so he's probably shaking the cage on purpose, so as to get rid of the people who won't pitch in, and make his actual followers idolise him even...
I think he knows that you will always have haters, so he's probably shaking the cage on purpose, so as to get rid of the people who won't pitch in, and make his actual followers idolise him even more, and so, use the app and future "everything app" even more. It's all publicity, even if the sign comes down, X has been in the news everywhere. Didn't have to advertise. And now X probably has a higher ratio of Elon Musk fans than the opposite views, whether political, moral, sexual, religious, whatever.
I'm not pro-Elon, he's just popcorn entertainment. Never was a big Twitter user, tried it, but always ended up deleting it, like FB, IG, YT, etc, etc. Twitter was just so I could open the embedded posts in the tech sites that I follow.
He tried to make PayPal use the x.com brand after the merger too. The guys obsessed with using that domain.
I'd maybe focus on getting that 50% of advertiser revenue back if I were him, but I guess investing heavily in a rebrand is the way to go. It's just like my days at student radio, every two years a different committee would take over and decide to do a rebrand. Instead of doing hard but productive stuff like focusing on adding new opportunities it's a lot easier to just bikeshed and tinker with branding.
There’s also SpaceX, the Tesla Model X, even his own son’s first name is X. What a cool letter. Super cool. Nothing says edgy sci-fi hackerman like the letter X.
Doing a rebrand is easy. You spend some money on a new look, create some updated core values you say you're going to abide by and then put up a new charter.
At this point he's just changing the turd's jacket, but it's still a turd.
If he doesn't stop the money haemorrhage and bring in some other revenue streams, Twitter is done for.
It's like he's trying to actively sabotage the platform, so this fits perfectly. Ruined the thing, now ruin its immaculate branding everyone knows.
Isn't there a conspiracy theory that the Saudis paid him to purposefully ruin the platform because of its potential to bring about social justice (e.g the arab spring happened via Twiiter)? I think he openly received a bunch of money from a saudi prince around the time he acquired twitter, and was at the qatar world cup
You're giving Elon too much credit.
Never attribute to malice what can be explained by incompetence.
I mean like most conspiracy theories that one’s fun to think about, but if that were true why wouldn’t he buy it and then just shut it down? It doesn’t make any sense why he would slowly squeeze the life out of it like this.
Well, it’s more fun this way though !
When discussing such thoughts, it's important to always keep Hanlon's Razor in mind.
And Musk has historically shown gross incompetence in all areas of life, he's essentially rich-by-accident and rich-inspite-of-his-efforts, so it doesn't make sense to attribute malice.
Nah.... He's a moron. He just happens to have the capital to build his own Truth Social.
Until he doesn't.
It's so weird to know this guy has pissed away 2/3rds of his fortune, and is still a hundred billionaire.
Insanity.
acquire... He doesn't build stuff; he just buys companies then takes all the credit for their products.
I would think he would change the logo to this. Seems fitting the way he's been handling things.
I think it's been said on this site before, but I'll say it too. I might be very cynical but part of me believes this really is intentional sabotaging on musks part. This is very conspiracy theory crackpot america centric talk but the countries slow descent into fascist corporatocracy is something musk takes part in, having previously declared himself to be voting for Republicans in future elections back in 2022.
Then he up and buys Twitter, a major social media network that I personally think was crucial to the 2020 election and 2022 midterm(to a lesser extent) having the turnout they did. It was a great way to try and mobilize younger voters and try and show them why they need to vote and rally them towards that cause. But now one of the richest men in the world who just switched his voting preferences on a whim bought a major social media network and is now tanking it. He's making seemingly all the wrong decisions, but what he's really doing is making Twitter an unuseable (rate limiting, culling all the staff leading to instability, other bad decisons) cesspit of misinformation(paying for verification), and breaking up a chunk of voting power by disrupting a major method of communication amongst younger folk. People who aren't super internet savvy might be on Twitter, but they likely won't go to Mastodon. And all the alternatives popping up inherently mean a divided online populace, which means less effective messaging. All of this with the next big election just around the corner, figuratively speaking. The timing is seemingly perfect.
All that having been said though, I do also realize that the world doesn't revolve exclusively around what goes on in my countries government. Elon is perfectly fine to believe what he wants to believe and vote how he likes, but I do not think one human being should be able to buy a major communication platform on a whim like this. It's too much power.
You are probably giving him too much credit. Even though you are right about all this, those are just unintended consequences off his actions. Consequently, twitter's importance is rapidly decreasing so people will probably move to chat services like whatsapp, signal, telegram etc but none of them are like twitter. Maybe Threads emerges as a clear winner. Who knows...
I just don't see it this way. Twitter was large enough to show there was a market, if Musk sabotages Twitter to the point of un-usability, it would be expected that someone would eventually make a replacement. Sure, that replacement may not have a critical mass of users by the next US (or even UK) election, but that's an expensive option for a single election cycle.
Much more believable that Musk was stupider than he thought he was, and everything since has been a poor reaction to being forced into buying Twitter.
Nah, you’re not wrong.
All that Elon had more than the average person was lots of money. Like, enough money that even with multiple bad decisions and a couple good ones he’s still stupid rich.
You’d be just as successful in his position, regardless of if you’re smart or not.
That's certainly one way to flush 17 years of branding and recognizability down the drain.
Also horrible SEO for the name, I have been searching for opinions on the matter on different websites (including twitter) and it's incredibly hard to find results on any search box.
Only a matter of time before trademark lawsuits from Take-Two enters the fray regarding X-Com
Seriously, this just seems so crazy to me. For all its faults, Twitter’s branding has always seemed really good ? And X is such a.. nothing name. Like someone else mentioned, the SEO will be terrible.
It’s funny, because I don’t know if you’re talking about Twitter or Elon.
Good to see the world finally wake up to billionaires in the last several years.
"Adieu to all the birds". If the "tweets" are the messages, wouldn't the "birds" be the users? It really seems to me at this point that killing Twitter is the desired goal.
Right. It feels like this whole takeover of Twitter was just a fun game for him from the start. Like he was high with his buddies one night talking about how he has all the money in the world and someone dared him to buy one of the world's biggest social media platforms and tank it.
If he wasn't so arrogant, that might make more sense. Instead, it's just blatantly obvious he thought he could do it better. Now that he's actually confronted with doing it better, he's throwing stuff at the wall to see what sticks, thinking his dumb ideas are better when they are anywhere from non-consequential to disastrous. He's had great success at taking others' ideas and helping make them happen, but it makes him feel like he's the "brains", when that's just not the case.
The X-logo graphic he posted gives me "2010 Minecraft intro" vibes.
Well, at least this change makes it easier to calls Mastodon/Threads/BlueSky posts tweets.
He somehow managed to turn an "x" into an indie distopian-horror movie teaser.
I'm glad to find someone else who hates companies stealing and ruining common words for their branding. It usually feels like nobody else cares.
Remember when (non-German) people used to actually use the word "uber?" Before all it meant was somebody's scummy profit operation? And sometime soon it might become awkward using the "meta" prefix, affecting many words at once... So many more words have had their souls sold without the consent of the populations who use those words. If a company is going to use common words in their branding, they should be required to use combinations of at least two words, or one unique/made up word if they really want to use just a single one. It screws up the language.
I'm aware I might sound slightly unhinged for caring this much about it, but I feel like I have to make up for how hardly anybody else seems bothered at all.
Maybe worse than that, even. Looks like early 2000s Excel to me. Nothing cooler than rebranding Twitter to look how a 40 year old spreadsheet app looked 20 years ago!
Is the little trailer formatted like a horror movie to make it clear to investors what to expect?
is your link a Nitter link or is my browser trying to redirect there? I thought Nitter functionality was killed by Twitter
Nitter. They were able to get it working again.
THANK YOU! I gave up on it, now for teddit.net / libreddit to work again. cries himself back to work
Looks like Nitter to me
I welcome this slow, accidental dismantling of everything that was sustaining Twitter
I suspect this might be true, but not in the way Musk wants.
Surefire way to force businesses and media to cut the cord. Think of how many places the Twitter logo/name/branding is embedded around the web, TV, and in print. Hell if I would bother updating it on my properties when it's been in jeopardy as a viable platform and a sinking ship since Musk took over. The guy is unhinged, maybe he'll feel like changing it again in another few weeks. Cut the cord now if you know what's best.
I was on Twitter fairly early (2008 or so) and it was a great place. Possibly because of the character limit (140 including links, even image links!).
I'm not on anymore ofc. It's not a good place to engage in anyway whatsoever, even just to post shitty thoughts, let alone payments or anything else!
from February: Elon Musk Wants to Relive His Start-Up Days. He’s Repeating the Same Mistakes.
It looks like the X11 logo.
That's was my first thought too.
I'm convinced at this point even if he literally took the site offline, People would desperately try to refresh until it magically appeared again, cause no amount of stupidity or hostility is going to cause everyone to permanently drop twitter.
Nearly every creator, every journalist who has taken issue with Musk and the direction he has led it in still uses the site religiously, and aren't even active on the alternatives that have cropped up over the last two years or so. Every time Musk does something dumb, or hostile, everyone says "This" will be the thing that kills twitter. but at the end of the day, it is habit and addiction that keeps people there. I mean hell, his last move more or less walled lurkers off from even seeing the content inside, and yet the migration that spurred still didn't amount to much. People gave Threads a try and left, and Mastodon only had a slight bump in activity for like a week until people thought "You know what, I still would rather use the bird site than this."
Twitter definitely is an interesting case study in how much shit can you drag a site through before people permanently leave, and the answer is apparently a lot. And other platform holders are taking notice too. Spez from reddit even praised Musk for his cost cutting, and I think the enshitification we have seen throughout reddit, youtube and other platforms is a result of web hosts realizing they can treat their users like shit, and people will still use their site.
I think there is only so much you can blame enshitification on people like Musk or Spez when we are the ones encouraging their behavior by continuing to engage.
I like Jack Butcher’s brand proposal for X:
"In April, Twitter's legacy blue bird logo was temporarily replaced by Dogecoin's Shiba Inu dog, helping drive a surge in the cryptocurrency's market value."
Really? I think I see why people think Musk is a genius. Sometimes the stupidity of the general public just baffles me.
I don't want to live in this planet anymore.
There’s been some decent discussion about this in the comments of The Verge article on the subject.
I think he knows that you will always have haters, so he's probably shaking the cage on purpose, so as to get rid of the people who won't pitch in, and make his actual followers idolise him even more, and so, use the app and future "everything app" even more. It's all publicity, even if the sign comes down, X has been in the news everywhere. Didn't have to advertise. And now X probably has a higher ratio of Elon Musk fans than the opposite views, whether political, moral, sexual, religious, whatever.
I'm not pro-Elon, he's just popcorn entertainment. Never was a big Twitter user, tried it, but always ended up deleting it, like FB, IG, YT, etc, etc. Twitter was just so I could open the embedded posts in the tech sites that I follow.
X? Who does he think he is, Zane the X-Slayer?
...Yeah, he probably does.
I appreciate this reference.
Flippin rich terd.
Why not something a bit more creative? Like a sun cross or a hakenkreuz?