Malcolm Owen
Elon Musk's transformation of Twitter into an "everything app" could take a big turn in the near future, with the rebrand to "X" possibly happening in the very near future.
Musk has been clear in his intentions to move Twitter to become the Western equivalent of China's WeChat, a platform covering retail and other services alongside messaging. Twitter has already been merged into an entity called X Corp, and soon, the name of the app may change to match.
In late night tweets on Saturday, Musk offered some musings to his large follower base. "And soon we shall bid adieu to the Twitter brand and, gradually, all the birds," one tweet states.
It was soon followed up by another, claiming "If a good enough X logo is posted tonight, we'll make [it] go live worldwide tomorrow."
After posting a black worn version of the Twitter logo and commenting "Like this but X," Musk then offered design advice, suggesting "If X is closest in style to anything, it should, of course, be Art Deco."
At 1:44 p.m. Eastern, Musk seemingly accelerated the timeline, revealing the X.com domain points to Twitter, and insisting an "Interim X logo goes live later today."
Musk also pinned a tweet to the top of his feed, showing the Twitter logo changing into an X, complete with glitchy video effects. This could be the new logo for the app.
At the time of publication, Twitter is still named Twitter, the birds are in their normal places, and the App Store still uses the Twitter name for the app listing.
The branding could end up being a good thing for Twitter, as it attempts to raise revenue following attempts to cut costs and numerous controversies. On July 15, Musk declared Twitter was "still negative cash flow," harmed by a 50% drop in advertising revenue and a heavy debt load.
Mike Wuerthele
Chip Loder
Amber Neely
Christine McKee
Andrew Orr
19 Comments
I asked ChatGPT to write me a limerick about Musk's new "everything app" rhyming with crap.
Is the new "everything app" on the map
But it glitched and went snap
Now it's causing a mishap
Leaving users to call it pure crap!
No kidding, that is a direct copy and paste!
Here's the haiku version:
Glitches bring a sudden snap
Crap, the users clap.
An "everything app," a wonder, first-rate,
But glitches appeared, sealing my fate,
Now users find me frustratingly innate,
In disappointment, they often berate,
Guess what am I?
It's your turn to speculate!
The renaming probably a good thing. It will help to reduce the confusion where people still think Twitter is something even remotely useful any more.
Honestly, this may ultimately be a service to civilization. Twitter was a cesspool even before Elon Musk accidentally bought it and then immediately went about trying to make the bad parts even worse.
Even as Musk has made it clear he really wants particularly populist/conservative influencers to lie on Twitter with impunity, he’s really run it into the ground and has dispersed many folks to other platforms, which thus far lack the critical mass to do the same level of damage to the public square that Twitter did.
I hope Twitter/S dies a thousands deaths.