Since he walked into Twitter HQ with Sinc in tow, Elon Musk has made some, er, tumultuous decisions, including turning verification into a subscription service, making some puzzling choices regarding "rate limits" supposedly to combat bot spam, firing thousands of staffers, and challenging Mark Zuckerberg to a cage fight. The company has made some, um, tumultuous decisions, including challenging Mark Zuckerberg to a cage fight. Normal things one does when acquiring a company.
The latest in a long list of his choices: replacing Twitter's classic blue bird with an X. That's because Musk had detailed in October that acquiring Twitter was just one step in his master plan to create an "X, whatever app." Now it has been made official.
The change was officially announced on Sunday by Twitter's current CEO, Linda Yaccarino. Says Yaccarino, "X is the future state of unlimited interactivity around audio, video, messaging, and payments/banking, creating a global marketplace for ideas, products, services, and opportunities." Yacarino went on to say that it will be "AI-powered" and "connect us all in ways we are only beginning to imagine." Exactly, I am beginning to imagine it.
Meanwhile, Musk crowdsourced a new logo and announced the change by stating: "And soon we will say goodbye to the twitter brand and, gradually, to all birds." He stated. Perhaps he meant all the logos on the website, but I can't help but worry that his new xAI company has already discovered something troubling about his bird friends in its efforts to "understand reality."
As he said, the birds are gone. But as of this writing, the verification service is still called "Twitter Blue," the platform still allows "retweets" and "quote tweets," and the post button is still called "tweet."
I dread to think what will replace the common use of these verbs that are a sign of success for any business in the realm of "let's just Google it for a minute" X-ting? Re-exes? And Mr. Musk chose the most difficult letter in the alphabet. Perhaps.
And then there's the logo itself. I don't doubt the infinite genius of a man who challenges other billionaires to a cage match, but it is hardly eye-catching, blending into the rest of the user interface like my page didn't load properly.
Still, maybe X is the future. As for me, I can't wait for the final dating element of this "whatever app" to link me to an eX partner. But with sites like Bluesky and Threads rushing to fill the gap in the market that Musk has somehow created by acquiring a near-monopoly app, it remains to be seen if X can offer everything.
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