Elon Musk have long been enamored with the letter X.
Now, he killing the Twitter brand and the iconic blue bird backing X as part of an effort to turn his $44 billion acquisition into something truly his.
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Musk’s vision for X resembles China’s WeChat, a super app that people can use for entertainment, and to buy goods and services online, in addition to posting updates and messaging their friends. But the rebranding comes after months of erratic behavior by the world’s richest person shut down users and push away advertisersleaving Twitter in a difficult financial position and increasingly vulnerable to competition.
Killing an iconic internet brand is “extremely risky” at a time when rival apps like the new Instagram Themes and smaller emerging companies like Blue sky Mike Proulx, analyst at Forrester, said that is attracting users.
Proulx said in an email that Musk has “alone to obliterate more than fifteen years of the brand name that has secured its place in our cultural lexicon”.
A company spokesperson was not available for comment for this story.
It’s not entirely a surprising move. Musk converted Twitter’s company name to X Corp, itself a subsidiary of X Holding Corp, as revealed in April file a court application. musk speak Last October, shortly before buying Twitter, he viewed the $44 billion deal as “a boost to the creation of X, the app of everything.”
The prominent X in the name of Musk’s rocket company, SpaceX. And more than two decades ago, X.com was the name of Musk’s payments company, which later became PayPal through a merger with a rival at the time.
Name changes have become quite common among web hosting companies. Facebook becomes meta IN end of 2021and Google approved Alphabet nickname six years ago. In those cases, however, the newly named parent companies keep the branding for their core services, so Facebook users and Google searchers can continue their work without interruption.
Musk seems to be betting that he can get rid of Twitter altogether. Over the weekend, he introduced the new X logo and said in a tweet that “we will soon say goodbye to the twitter brand and gradually all birds.”
Linda Yaccarino, who was hired by Musk as CEO in May, said in an interview. send email to staff Second that the 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.”
Success in that mission is easier said than done.
Proulx said that Musk’s desire to turn X into a super app requires “time, money and people”, something Twitter “no longer has”. Earlier this month, Musk speak that Twitter has suffered a 50% drop in ad revenue and that it needs to “get positive cash flow before we get any other luxuries.”
Some advertisers have become concerned about promoting their products on Twitter because of reports showing an increase in hate speech, racism, and offensive comments on the platform. document by many civil rights groups and researchers.
Musk has tried to offset some of the drop in advertising with a premium subscription service. But at $8 a month, the company would need tens of millions of subscribers to make up for the loss.
The remaining advertisers on the platform must now adopt a new jargon. People and businesses around the world know Twitter messages as “tweets”. Like Kleenex, Twitter was able to develop a recognizable brand that was instantly familiar to consumers, a feat that any of the company’s marketing teams would celebrate.
Ralph Schackart, an analyst at William Blair, told CNBC last week that his team of analysts “didn’t collect anything” from the advertisers they polled in a recent survey. survey in the digital advertising market shows that these businesses have increased their spending on Twitter. Meanwhile, there are signs that the overall digital advertising market may be improving, according to a survey by William Blair.
Insider Intelligence analyst Jasmine Enberg said in an emailed statement that the name change marks “a dismal day for many Twitter users and advertisers” and is a “clear signal that the Twitter of the past 17 years is gone and not coming back.”
“Twitter’s rebranding is a reminder that Elon Musk, not Threads or any other app, has been and always has been the most likely ‘Twitter Killer’,” Enberg wrote.
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