Comment by mrweasel
5 hours ago
I can't figure out if renaming Twitter to X is the stupidest branding decision I've ever encountered or if it's bloody brilliant.
Every time Danish media talks about X, they say "The social media X". So X in itself is completely unrecognizable, you actively have to mention that you're talking about the social media platform. That's is however also rather genius, because now the connection between X and "social media" is strengthened every time it's mentioned.
It's stupid. Every normal (ie not terminally online) person I speak to calls it twitter and is confused if I call it X. For some reason most of them think an "x post" is on instagram too. I guess because influencers call crossposting that?
Pretty sure lots of people would read x post as cross post, not just influencers. ‘X’ to stand in for cross is a fairly old convention; I think I’ve seen 19th century examples.
If you do it in person you have to say X with a slight look of disgust in your face, to let them know what you're talking about.
Most people I know only knows about X/Twitter from the news cycle, it's not something they themselves use, it's just the platform used by journalists, politicians and commentators. It's not a place normal people go.
Right, because there was always such a weak connection between Twitter and "social media".
It's a patently boneheaded branding decision, there's no way to spin it as even potentially smart.
In German media, they always have a little "X (formerly Twitter)" thing. The rebrand is completely ridiculous.
German editorialized media always refers to it as a Short Message Service (Der Kurznachrichtendienst "X").
"The service formerly known as Twitter"...
It is easily one of the most stupid and arrogant business decisions in history. The Twitter brand was easily worth billions and changing to X wiped out an estimated $4 billion to $20 billion in brand value overnight.