UNITED STATES—It is the one thing that everyone has been talking about for weeks is the constant changes for the social media titan, Twitter or as Elon Musk has renamed ‘X.’ Yeah, do not ask me about the name because I cannot give you an answer. All I can tell you is that it is TWITTER and will always be TWITTER for me. It is what it is. You can rebrand the name, you can change the logo, but it has been known as Twitter since 2009, which means you expect people to completely forget that name after 14 years?
Yeah, good luck with that Elon; it doesn’t seem to be working too well at the moment. Musk purchased the social media titan in 2022 for $44 billion and has been making changes that have people in uproar. Charging people for the blue check mark, limiting the amount of posts you can view, preventing people who don’t have accounts from seeing others content. He has completely changed Twitter and I think that was Musk’s approach all along.
However, there is a problem with that. People like what they like and if you change it too much you might create a problem. At some point, everything evolves. Does anyone remember MySpace? You probably do not because it was replaced by Facebook, which is ancient if you speak to anyone in their 20s nowadays because it is all about Instagram, Snapchat or TikTok.
Facebook or Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg is hoping to challenge Twitter with his new social media platform Threads, which garnered a lot of people upon its launch. However, within a few weeks, Threads has lost plenty of subscribers, but remember just like Facebook and Twitter, anything new has to gain its footing before it gets its popularity people.
So Twitter has been rebranded with ‘X.’ So exactly what the hell does ‘X’ mean? Do not ask me because I don’t know and it makes absolutely no sense besides the fact that Musk is obsessed with the letter for some reason. It feels like he just wants to rid himself of anything tied to Twitter, the problem is that name has lived for over 14 plus years. You cannot just erase it and expect everyone to be like ok, all is good. Nope, doesn’t work that way. You got rid of the iconic bird, the name has changed, but the people are always going to call it Twitter. Hell, I’m still calling it Twitter because that is what I’ve always known it as.
I’m not about to tell someone guess what I’m about to log into my X account to x someone. Do you know how stupid and silly that sounds? It makes absolutely no sense whatsoever America. None! What are you going to say let me x someone versus tweet. I’m not sure if Elon Musk thought about that because everyone I’m talking to still refers to the social media platform as Twitter and indicated they have no plans to change the terminology they are familiar with.
It is VERY DIFFICULT to rebrand a product after it has been known for such an extensive time period as one name by the public. That’s like changing McDonald’s to Donald’s, Coca-Cola to Cola Coke, Pepsi, to Sepsi. You see the problem? A name has to be catchy and it has to click if it doesn’t it’s a sinking ship before it even begins.
Do I expect Musk to admit that X is a stupid name for the former Twitter? No, he has to be defiant and prove a point and it looks like he will not realize a mistake was made. Will Twitter still exist in 5 years from now? Yes, in what facet, I cannot explain, but if Musk doesn’t do his best to cater to the people that made Twitter what it is today, Twitter might become a thing of the past.