If I renamed this blog to "Q", you'd think I was joining a cult or just really liked James Bond. But I'm not a billionaire, so it would just be weird.
Elon is a billionaire. So when he renamed Twitter to X, it was "visionary."
(Narrator: It was also weird.)
The Blue Bird is Dead
Twitter had one of the most recognizable brands in the world. "Tweet" was a verb. It was in the dictionary. "X" is... a variable. A close button. A rating for adult movies.
Killing the bird was like McDonald's renaming itself to "Food." Sure, it's accurate. But where's the soul?
The Obsession with X
Elon has loved the letter X since 1999 (X.com, which became PayPal).
- SpaceX
- Model X
- X.AI
- X (the app)
- X Æ A-12 (his child, literally)
This wasn't a business decision. It was a 25-year-old aesthetic obsession finally coming to life.
The App for Everything
The goal is to build the "Everything App" (like WeChat in China). Payments, video, dating, jobs, shouting at strangers.
So far, we mostly just have the shouting at strangers part.
Conclusion
I still call it Twitter. You still call it Twitter. Even the URL was twitter.com for months after the change.
Brands are sticky. You can paint over the logo, but you can't paint over 15 years of cultural muscle memory.
But hey, at least the logo is easy to draw. It's just two lines. Design efficiency: 10/10. Brand destruction: 11/10.
