Why Elon doesn't like Larry
Why does Elon not like Larry?
As you all perhaps know Twitters official mascot until a day ago, was a bird and the birds name is Larry.?According to a tweet by co-founder Biz Stone it is called Larry the Bird as a tribute to Larry Bird who played for the Boston Celtics. ?I was caught unawares when my friends on an WhatsApp group of intellectuals told me that the twitter logo had changed into an X.?What? Why?
I hastily opened my twitter app only to see the familiar bird on a patch of blue as the opening screen.
Wait a minute.?For some time I couldn’t see the X. Then a friend said he had opened it on his computer. I quickly rush to my laptop and open twitter.?It took me some time to see a weak little X tucked away in the corner of my screen.?And the language was the same. It said tweet.?
I then rushed to the App Store to check?what the logo on the download would reveal.?Once again I was welcomed by Larry, and that told me that the new X branding was far from complete.
I had never thought about it before but the logic of the previous branding fell into place.?Twitter because that is the short high pitched sound that birds make. That is why you tweet.?So what was the logic for renaming it X? ?
Elon Musk elaborated.?“ Twitter was acquired by X Corp both to ensure freedom of speech and as an accelerant for X, the everything app. This is not simply a company renaming itself, but doing the same thing.
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The Twitter name made sense when it was just a 140 character messages going back and forth – like birds tweeting – but now you can post almost anything, including several hours of video.?
In the months to come, we will add comprehensive communications and the ability to conduct your entire financial world. The Twitter name does not make sense in that context, so we must bid adieu to the bird.”
Yes so I got it.?You have long videos instead of 140 words.?But you tweeted on twitter. The logic was solid and unquestionable. My question to Elon is what do you do on X??You still tweet as indeed the image above seems to suggest. Something wrong here.?Why am I still tweeting on X?
Now coming to the logo which was the weakest part of my computer screen when I opened twitter.?For a moment I thought some highfalutin design company had probably charged Elon a few million dollars for a new logo and made a few quick bucks.
But here is the ultimate disappointment.?It is simply the letter X from the Special Alphabets 4 font which you can buy on the internet for $29.99.?Now that is cheapest logo I have ever come across for a major corporation.??Now I have no pretensions to being an expert typographer but after having spent more than forty five years in advertising I do think I can tell a bad logo from a good one.
But enough said.?Farewell Larry.?Hello X whoever you are and whatever you want to be.?Please introduce yourself!
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From Brand naming and logo perspectives, it is certainly terrible. However, did we assign so much meaning and such emotions to a name Twitter and to a random blue colour school kid drawing of a bird? It is the power of what it is (simply put l, the product) and the brand salience and the equity. Santro was the much loved sunshine car. But Santro just doesn't exist as a word in any language. Have we tried finding out the meaning of Google. We love it as it is. We have some form and character of Google in our mind, per how we connect with Google emotionally, with or without knowing where the term has come from. What we have heard is that X is going to be a super app. If the super app is going to be super cool, X will not be a cross, but a tick!