Earlier this week, Elon Musk announced that Twitter was officially becoming X. While seemingly a random change, X has been an obsession of Musk's for a long time. Once a former name for PayPal, which Musk was fired from after renaming it X, Musk has never let the concept go. Along with the branding change, Musk also announced that he intended to make the platform a world leader in online banking.
However, the transition has been far from smooth. Musk can't actually trademark the name because the social media trademark for X is held by Meta while the financial services trademark for X is held by Microsoft. Meanwhile, the site is still Twitter in Japan because "X Japan" is also an existing trademark. Furthermore, Musk announced that the YouTube-rivaling video platform aspect of the site would be called "XVideos"... you know, like the porn site. Additionally, the re-brand has wiped an estimated $4-20 billion from Twitter's market value. Despite all of this, Musk has been forging ahead with the rebrand. On July 30. the Twitter mobile app officially updated to X. Safe to say, users were not happy.
Users Lament Official X Change
Soon after the auto-update went through, the topic "Twitter is X" began to trend. Very few words were said but if you've ever seen a gif used to express displeasure, you can probably find it in the "Twitter is X" tag. However, the change highlights that, at least to Musk, it's Elon's world and we're simply living in it. The X rebranding is something that no one wanted and does nothing to fix the myriad problems that have occurred under Musk's ownership. It's the equivalent of putting a new coat of paint on a car that's actively on fire.
There may be more truth to that idea than meets the eye. One estimation suggests that Twitter is three months from defaulting on its loans taken out to buy the site. Those loans were secured with Tesla stock. Meaning the bank will seize that stock and, since it won't be enough to pay the debt, due to a value depreciation of up to 75%, they can start seizing personal assets of Elon Musk including the Twitter company itself and his interest in SpaceX.
Best Reactions To "Twitter Is X"
What do you think of the change? Let us know in the comments.
[via]
