And now got rid of literally the only thing the company had left…the name that had become a household term and even coined its own verb, so pervasive that it was even routinely used for official government business (despite the illegality of doing so).
How long until shareholders sue him? Of all the letters... "X" on a black background??? It looks like a logo for a porn site with an exclusive, gentleman's club vibe. Of the 26 letters, he had to pick the one everyone automatically associates with porn and NSFW?
He's completely trashed the brand from start to finish. This move, it's like Coca-Cola changing the name of its namesake beverage to R. Why would I call it a Coke if it's not Coca-Cola any longer? Similarly, why would I call it a tweet if it's not Twitter? The name of the company became a verb, branding professionals make a career of an accomplishment like that. And this "genius" just threw it away because he's high AF again.
I dare you to find a single person in the marketing profession not on his payroll who thinks this is anything other than a colossally bad decision.
You do make a good point about the verb level branding. On the other hand a lot of people still say "Go Google that..." regardless of which browser you're using for search. So it's likely that the "tweet" verb will survive the transition to the name Musk copied from the punk band X. Heck, he could simply have used the album cover art from X's Los Angeles album for his new logo because it so beautifully and accurately captures the current state of Twitter since it was consumed by Musk. I'd bet the band would offer the branding up for the right price.
Despite my comments, I still admire some of the things Musk has done. I think he's generally a very smart and ambitious guy that's fallen into a social media rat hole of his own creation. Unfortunately it's something that brings out all the bad things that were hiding in a part of his personality that were suppressed and under control while he was still focused on creating things rather than destroying things. At some point, hopefully, he'll realize that he's wasting his time, energy, and talent on something that isn't going to have lasting value. He has plenty of money and he can buy talent and has energy to spare. But time is the ultimate and unavoidable variable in the zero-sum game of life. I can't fathom why he's wasting his limited time on Earth, and perhaps Mars, on something that seems to be, at least in its current form, a complete time sink hole.
Musk is systemically destroying the brand and its revenue stream. I have little reason to believe it won't be be eclipsed by Threads as X becomes a Truth Social competitor.
Elon handed Zuckerberg a life Threaded life raft, because Meta was listing at sea and Zuckerberg was the biggest scum bucket in tech but not anymore that torch has been on…….
And to top it off, Threads might one day be enough to make Zuckerberg the richest man in the world………. Yikes.
"There's absolutely no limit to this transformation," Yaccarino tweeted. "X will be the platform that can deliver, well... everything. [Elon Musk] and I are looking forward to working with our teams and every single one of our partners to bring X to the world."
All that nonsense with charging developers through the nose for API access, and this ostrich still thinks the company has "partners" that will help bring its vision to life???
I’m curious who’ll be laughing some years from now. IIRC, Musk always wanted to create the “western WeChat” - the one platform “to rule them all”. Any of you, who have been to China will probably know that it is virtually impossible to live without WeChat: Payments, Reservations, Customer Service, Streaming,… This guy certainly has a lot of funding; I guess he just waits until the X takes off.
Build the app first, andthen promote the app. If you promote the app before building it, it’s “vaporware.”
And a big thank you for pointing out that the apostrophe in this case is wrong. An apostrophe is for possessives and shortenings (don’t, won’t), not to show plurals.
Yea, but no. As any fan of the Oakland A’s can tell you, "The apostrophe is also used to form ... the plurals of the letters of the alphabet (p's and q's, three A's)."
With all due respect to As fans, using an apostrophe to form a plural is done a lot, but still a mistake. According to Grammerly:
“Apostrophes and plurals
Using an unnecessary apostrophe to form the plural of a noun is a very common mistake.”
And according to grammar book.com:
“ Rule 2b. Do not use an apostrophe + s to make a regular noun plural.
Incorrect:Apostrophe’s are confusing. Correct:Apostrophes are confusing.”
Of course languages evolve and one day it will be considered correct (like saying “Him and I saw the movie”, but not yet. Patience.
The Chicago Manual of Style says you're both (a little) wrong. Apostrophes are, in fact, used to pluralize single lowercase letters (e.g., x's and o's) but that's about the only time it would be used to designate a plural. So the apostrophe in X's is incorrect, but there are limited situations where they can be used in a plural. (Unfortunately, I don't have an account, so I couldn't read the actual linked rules, just the answer to this FAQ.)
That said... they're free to do whatever they want with their branding - the rules of grammar/spelling/capitalization don't apply. They're certainly not the first company to misspell or slightly modify a word to identify a brand (Google, Lyft, iPhone) or even just make a word up from scratch (NVIDIA, Spotify). Saying the apostrophe is wrong in this context is like telling someone they've misspelled their own name. (This also applies to the Oakland A's... the apostrophe may or may not be grammatically correct, but it doesn't matter if that's what they want to call themselves.)
I’m curious who’ll be laughing some years from now. IIRC, Musk always wanted to create the “western WeChat” - the one platform “to rule them all”. Any of you, who have been to China will probably know that it is virtually impossible to live without WeChat: Payments, Reservations, Customer Service, Streaming,… This guy certainly has a lot of funding; I guess he just waits until the X takes off.
Build the app first, andthen promote the app. If you promote the app before building it, it’s “vaporware.”
Comments
Gutted the content management.
Gutted the brand.
Gutted the reputation.
And now got rid of literally the only thing the company had left…the name that had become a household term and even coined its own verb, so pervasive that it was even routinely used for official government business (despite the illegality of doing so).
Awesome move.
And to top it off, Threads might one day be enough to make Zuckerberg the richest man in the world………. Yikes.
90 days (3 months).
Counting down the days until the X brand and logotype are shelved, and the Twitter brand, logotype and symbol are restored.
Brand X
https://www.reuters.com/technology/problem-with-x-meta-microsoft-hundreds-more-own-trademarks-new-twitter-name-2023-07-25/
"Meta, Microsoft, hundreds more own trademarks to new Twitter name"