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5 Tech Takeaways from Twitter's Change to 'X'
Twitter has a new name, a new logo and a new direction.
Elon Musk revealed that Twitter will become X; an ‘everything app’ which aims to add multiple new features and finally make the app cashflow-positive.
Many of the additions to the app, which currently has 260 million daily users, are unknown. But CEO Linda Yaccarino tweeted (or is that X’ed?) on Sunday that the app would be AI-powered and “centred in audio, video, messaging, payments/banking”.
Why is this happening? What does all of this mean for social media as a whole? And how could this transform the technology landscape?
In today’s Emerge5, I’ll deep dive into five of the key takeaways from Twitter’s rebrand to X.
Twitter’s rebrand is Elon’s answer to WeChat
Elon Musk tweeted last year that his ultimate goal when buying Twitter was to make it “the everything app.” The world’s richest man has referred several times to transforming the social media platform into a product closer to WeChat, an enormously popular Chinese app that allows users to message and create posts, as well as pay bills and order taxis.
“You basically live on WeChat in China. If we can recreate that with Twitter, we’ll be a great success,” Musk told Twitter staff last year.
Meta appears to hold the rights to ‘X’
Elon Musk announced on Sunday that he would begin the process of rebranding Twitter to X, but it looks like Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta already appears to have a trademark for an ‘X’ logo.
Business Insider reports that Meta has registered an ‘X’ logo in connection to "online social networking services" and "social networking services in the fields of entertainment, gaming, and application development."
The logo looks very different from the one that Twitter is looking to adopt; but Twitter could run into some hurdles given that it wants to use its X for social-networking purposes, similar to what was stated in Meta's filings.
Musk’s obsession with the letter X
“The letter “X” has been on just about everything the billionaire has touched for the last two-plus decades”, wrote Ellis Stewart for EM360tech.
“X.com was the original name for Paypal; it’s in his SpaceX company name; it’s in the name for the Tesla SUV; and it anchors his new OpenAI competitor called XAI. Now he’s finally doing something with the X.com domain he bought back from Paypal in 2017.”
X as a name has been branded forgettable, non-descript, lazy and even stupid - but it looks like Elon has been sold on the idea for a long time and isn’t about to let it go.
What this means for Threads and TikTok
What does this all mean for the apps that have spent their entire lives competing with Twitter for your time?
Well, it looks like Threads is starting to struggle. Interest has plummeted for Meta’s answer to Twitter, with a 20% drop in daily active users and a 50% drop in user engagement, according to CNBC.
TikTok has also dogpiled onto the scrap this week, announcing the introduction of text-only posts in a bid to “expand the boundaries of content creation for everyone” and “give the written creativity we’ve seen in comments, captions, and videos a dedicated space to shine.”
The big question - will the X rebrand be successful?
Twitter’s rebranding “takes time, money, and people [to be successful] – three things that the company no longer has,” says Mike Proulx, research director at the analysis firm Forrester.
It’s no secret that advertising income, Twitter’s main source of revenue, has been badly damaged from concerns over low content moderation standards. Elon himself has been very public about Twitter still being cashflow-negative - and it’s clear that the company needs to do something drastic to turn that around.
Will X be exactly what Twitter needs? Only time will tell.
