‘X’ marks the spot for Twitter as the platform buries the bird

Twitter rebrands into a letter

In perhaps one of the dumbest rebranding decisions since Tribune Publishing decided to call itself “tronc”, Elon Musk decided Sunday to change the name of the social media platform Twitter into X – as in the 24th letter of the alphabet.  The rebrand comes a little over a year after Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion – clearly overpaying for a social media platform people are abandoning faster than a union hall with a broken air conditioner on a 98 degree day. 

Linda Yaccarino – who became CEO after exiting a marketing executive position at NBCUniversal, said in a company will “continue to delight our entire community with new experiences in audio, video, messaging, payments, banking – creating a global marketplace for ideas, goods, services, and opportunities.”

So basically, Musk is trying to transform Twitter into some kind of “Super App” where it would be a one-stop shop for anything – though most users only want to get on the platform to complain about anything and everything. They use Twitter to complain about Bank of America, not use it as a substitute for Bank of America.

The rebrand comes with a lot of risks – including wiping out an established brand name as the little blue bird familiar to users worldwide vanished on Monday and replaced by a stylized “X”. However, there was plenty of evidence the word Twitter and any variation of the word remained, including “Search Twitter” and the word “Tweet” on the web home page. Overnight, Musk “singlehandedly wiped out over fifteen years of a brand name that has secured its place in our cultural lexicon,” said Mike Proulx, who is a financial analyst at Forrester in an e-mail to CNBC. 

Of note, Chicago’s “Sears Tower” was trending nationally for a few days, as users pointed out many locals and people around the world still call the one-time tallest building in the world by that name and not its current one, the Willis Tower. 

It’s not the first time a media company underwent a controversial rebrand. Back in 2016, Tribune Publishing – split from the original Tribune Co. after it spent four years in bankruptcy under Sam Zell, rebranded itself as “tronc” – in a move widely mocked, especially from HBO late night talk show host John Oliver. Another name change took place in 2015, when Gannett’s old TV station group became Tegna. Not surprisingly, the “X” rebrand was widely panned, including a jeer from the Chicago Sun-Times editorial board. 

Musk’s companies often have the words “X” in them, including his holding company (X Corp.), Space X, and others. Since buying Twitter, Musk has alienated users, driven away advertisers, forcing the unsuccessful Twitter Blue onto people, and making the platform less user-friendly – not to mention embracing controversial right-wing principles by liking tweets of known white supremacists.

Perhaps the best thing about Musk’s decision to rebrand Twitter is T Dog Media can no longer call it “the bird poop app”. But that doesn’t change the fact that Musk’s purchase of Twitter is nothing but a flat-out disaster. 

 

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