It’s a new day of a new week and Elon Musk is again in the incessant glare of publicity as he announced yet another controversially disruptive change to the social media platform he bought for a staggering $44 billion last year – Twitter’s name. In a whirlwind series of tweets, Musk revealed that he plans to change the logo of Twitter from the iconic blue birdie to an ‘X’.
Twitter’s Name Changes To X: Rebranding 15 Years Of An Iconic Platform
Elon Musk rebranding Twitter to X comes as no surprise to people apprised of his history for the letter insofar. Starting after midnight ET, Twitter’s leader said that he’s expecting to make the change worldwide as soon as Monday.
The billionaire Tesla CEO has hosted a startup named X.com (presently known as PayPal) and a rocket company named SpaceX under his umbrella. Musk also tweeted his intentions behind purchasing Twitter – as an accelerant for building X, the Everything app.
Our headquarters tonight pic.twitter.com/GO6yY8R7fO
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 24, 2023
Currently appointed as CEO, longtime NBC Universal executive Linda Yaccarino broached upon Twitter’s name change, dubbing it as another chance to transform people’s interactions.
“It’s an exceptionally rare thing to get a second chance to make another big impression. Twitter changed the way we communicate and X will now go further to transform the global town square.”
X is expected to be the future of boundless interactivity, focusing on creating a global marketplace, not just with textual communication but even audio and video messaging, and payments/ banking.
Twitter’s Logo Change Receives Mixed Reactions
Many Twitter users took up to the eponymous platform to voice their dismay at Elon Musk’s decision to change Twitter’s name. As a platform that understandably patented the verb ‘tweeting’, many users have raised questions about what the new verb will be called.
Over the past two decades, Twitter was solely the most successful social media platform outside of Meta’s vortex of Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram and other origins of WeChat, Reddit, Pinterest, YouTube, TikTok and Snapchat. A huge global mass of Twitter’s audience has already expressed their exasperation owing to the constantly dissatisfying changes being made to the platform.
(Image Courtesy – Twitter @elonmusk)
In the latter half of 2022, his other company board members including Tesla and SpaceX were concerned that Musk was neglecting his duties in the wake of ownership of a new digital town square.
After his takeover, Musk has been chastised for the course of actions being taken at Twitter, which have reasonably prompted advertisers and users to flee out of the mess. Many believe that Musk is undermining the influence that the users have over the app and is only keen on money-making strategies. Twitter’s revenue had significantly dropped after the billionaire took over and in a controversial attempt to revive the situation from bankruptcy, nearly three-fourths of the workforce was laid off.
Thousands of users had condemned Musk’s decision for a $8-per-month subscription fee for Twitter Blue but the latest rollout of tweet reading limits pushed everyone off the edge.
“You completely blew it. Never seen anyone blow billions of dollars so ineptly. Instead of thinking of all the good you could have done in the world, you bought a globally recognized brand and changed everything (including the name, which is literally what you paid for).. to the point you could have built your own from scratch for 1/10,000th of the cost.”
It is almost as if Musk wants to be met with sharp criticism as a way of perpetually being spoken about.
On the other hand, some users have lauded Twitter’s rebranding as apt. Having flourished for a short period with ‘free speech’ under Musk’s leadership, these users believe that Musk needs to craft his own legacy by transforming the social media platform completely, including Twitter’s name.
“It’s an incredible time at X. Every decision, every line of code, every interaction forms a part of our rich history. This isn’t just about building a product but about crafting a legacy.”
The latest Twitter logo change and rebranding of Twitter comes as new competition arrived in the form of Meta’s Threads app, earlier this month. It has been observed as Twitter’s alternative.