What is the future of Twitter... I mean X.

Yesterday without the marketing fanfare Elon Musk rebranded Twitter to X.

The reaction to the change has been mixed and for some, shows more cracks in his business genius.

It’s scary to think of how much change has been implemented at Twitter since he took over in October 2022. He fired almost 75% of his workforce, lost advertisers due to concerns over the changes to community guidelines and launched a paid for subscription.

Yes, all that has happened in less than a year.

So, why do this rebrand now? Is this a reaction to Mark Zuckerberg launching threads or does Elon Musk have a plan?

Elon has a?plan

If we look back to Elon’s comments in the past, he has always had a vision to create a version of wechat. wechat is the Chinese social media network, which is much more than a social channel — it is a one stop shop for communications, commerce, connection and content.

Here is what Elon said about it:

Is Threads really a threat to X/Twitter?

No.

Threads isn’t a threat to Twitter, despite it looking almost identical. Threads is years behind it and it would cost billions to catch up.

Threads is respond to the issue that Instagram has seen more people using text only content, even posting their Tweets on Instagram.

The trend of posting tweets onto Instagram has become sticky and that poses a threat and an opportunity for Instagram.

Threads is a stab at Musk, certainly, but it’s actually because Twitter gets too much promotion on Instagram. Why would you let a rival platform get so much free advertising.

For Instagram it looks like ‘the value is on Twitter, I’m reposting it here’

So Elon isn’t doing this as a response to Threads. Threads has months of development ahead and one thing Meta isn’t great at is rolling out new features quickly. They obsess about testing and roll out….a good thing I suppose, but that means their Threads development will take time.

Musk on the other hand is prepared to take big risks.

Why did Musk do it like?this?

Elon Musk has always been a maverick. His clashes with the media over the last year have been entertaining to say the least. It’s clear the media had an axe to grind against him over the paid subscription and they were very quick to cover every last issue at Twitter.

Over the past 12 months there have been major issues on other channels, which have almost gone under the radar.

If Elon had done the classic rebrand and PR whirlwind, it’s likely much of the media would have ignored it, played it down or painted in a negative light.

He needed a whirlwind of media attention.

The best way to do that is create a storm.

He changed it so fast, everyone was knocked off guard and the media was forced to cover something because the world was talking about it.

One little tip: Media can create a storm (get people talking about it) and it can cover the storm (report because people are talking about it).

Good PR gets the media on board to create a buzz.

Good marketing creates the buzz the media have to follow.

The first age of social media is?over

If you look at the billions Meta has spent on the metaverse or Twitter’s paid subscription, it’s clear all the social channels are looking toward the evolution of social media.

These companies have grown from an advertising model, which, so far has worked out well for them, but they are all looking to create value in the platforms themselves.

They want the users to pay, rather leverage their users to get brands to pay.

Partly, this is because advertising is business has matured and their growth has slowed, but they also want to leverage new revenue streams.

They want us to pay for subscriptions and transaction fees.

It’s a little like we’ve had access to freemium social media and now they want to launch the premium version.

Despite the widespread ridicule of Twitter’s paid subscription, it didn’t take meta long to make their own version.

In some senses social platforms have had their own paymaster, the big brands and advertisers, which they have seen how vulnerable they are to boycotts.

Imagine, the news does a major investigation into a social platform and finds something horrific, you would then have 24/7 reporting and every major advertiser feeling the pressure to withdraw their ads.

Would you want to be a company with a target on its back and your business model vulnerable to media intimidation?

We are entering the second age and Twitter wants to be first.

Twitter’s will become an ecosystem

Social platforms will evolve into an ecosystem. Twitter is likely going to be first. Social Media will become more than a profile and posts, it will become an ecosystem for our lives.

More and more of our lives will involve our preferred social media ecosystem. They want to be involved in our finances, purchases, buying habits, friendships and families.

It becomes hard to leave a platform if we use it for more than just doom scrolling.

This ecosystem feels a little unclear right now, but it will pose a direct threat to a number of other big tech beasts. There may even be some tie-ups and exclusive partnerships in an attempt to retain users.

There is no doubt the speed of change Musk is undertaking seems to be crazy. It feels like so much change has happened already and Twitter is now heading on the journey to becoming an ecosystem.

There are a many unanswered questions about the platform.

I feel that’s deliberate, it creates discussion, debate and everyone will be wondering the big questions like…. what is the new name for a tweet? ??

It might feel crazy, but I wouldn’t write off Musk’s plan.

In 2012, Neil Armstrong, along with others, expressed doubt and criticism Musk’s plans for SpaceX.

Given he now is taking people to space and has contracts with NASA, I would be cautious about predicting his doom with X.