X marks the spot… where the iconic blue bird is buried…

In just 9 months of owning Twitter, Elon Musk has limited the daily tweets, permitted verification for everyone, allowed “free speech” galore and now in a sudden turn of events, he has decided to change the whole brand.

As rushed as Sunday’s events felt, X has been in the pipeline for a while now. It seems being rivalled by Meta’s Threads has pushed Musk to ditch the blue bird and take the first steps in creating his ‘everything app’. His hopes are that he can recreate the popular Chinese app ‘WeChat’; incorporating multiple functions from catching up with friends, to ordering a taxi, all the way through to paying your bills.

But if we just hit the pause button for a second, is the takeover working for him so far?

As users of the app daily, we asked around the team for their thoughts on the bullish rebrand and how he’s taken the platform from what it was, to what it is now...

Dave Clancy, Head of Film and Animation:

I think this is all part of a bigger masterplan to incorporate Twitter into a different offering going forward - so instead of Twitter being a standalone app it will be part of other integrated apps that work together and allow the user to do a whole bunch of things in one place (chat/order things/navigate/research/translate etc)

He's probably aware that Twitter, by itself and in its current form, has a very short lifespan and will be prone to being superseded/going out of fashion. But to use its user base as the starting point to develop his 'everything' app makes total sense.

I really don't like Twitter and haven't been an active user for some time - and am even less likely to re-join now he has allowed 'free speech' - which to me just encourages people to spread misinformation and extreme views in an unregulated environment. So, for me, I think he's effectively putting Twitter out to pasture and using the user base to launch something new and bigger, where a form of Twitter may be a part of it.

Adam Palmer, Senior Media and Communications Manager

Two things come to mind when I think about Musk’s ownership of Twitter. One is the historical branding and two is crisis communications/public relations. For a social media platform that was created nearly two decades ago, in the past 9 months under Elon’s reign, he doesn’t seem to be too bothered about undoing everything that people love it for, just as long as he is happy with his expensive toy. “Free speech” is just one argument – letting people say what they please and for it to be uncensored… surely that’s a dangerous line to tread. But hey, all publicity is good publicity, right?

With the branding aspect and what the platform is known for… the synonymous bird, following actual celebrities and popular figures and viewing as many tweets as you like – all undone within a month or two. It feels like a live experiment to test people and their reactions – perhaps to see who are sheep and stick around or to see if users actually leave the platform for Threads or the alike. But maybe Elon knows like the rest of us… Twitter is a quick, social media “drug”. It’s addictive, fun and a source of information. Making the bird an “X” and testing other boundaries won’t stop us from refreshing that timeline.

Mark Sutherland, Full Stack Developer

Since Musk has taken over Twitter, or????as it’s now called, he’s made numerous seemingly short-sighted decisions both that have caused him to either announce something then quickly revert it or come up with excuses as to why things are happening.

As a brand, it seems incredibly awkward especially as ‘tweeting’ and ‘send a tweet’ are almost at the point of being common terms for posting something online, regardless of what site you're using “I posted a tweet on Facebook etc.”?

I wouldn’t be surprised if this all gets dropped and reverted to Twitter branding in a couple of months' time.

In a nutshell, I’m not a fan.

Bring back the bird…

Well, our team is overwhelming in support of the bird coming home. It’s going to be an interesting few months for sure, but we think it’s a brave decision to lose all the iconic Twitter identity when it comes to social media history. There’s still a long way to go in Musk’s ambitious plans of making X “the biggest financial institution in the world” and currently, we don’t know who will stick around to see it…

But hey, what do we know. We are still logged in.

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