Y oh Y
Meh
Mercurial billionaire Elon Musk has ditched the Twitter brand name in favor of a white "X" on a black background, and is kicking the blue bird logo out of the nest to signal a world-bending shake-up at the biz. Musk has referred to the company as X Corp since he bought Twitter for $44 billion in October, and tweeted at the …
Around here we call that
Putting lipstick on the ass end of a pig. Twitter will shit all over you if you post anything that is not aligned with his right wing beliefs.
He must be hoping that 'Truth Central' goes TITSUP ASAP so they'll all come back to his dying platform.
"There are a fair number of artists and other creators that relied on twitter to advertise and support their work. "
I've met some of them and find that plenty don't have their own website, domain and list a gMail address. They've been taught for years that the lowest price yields the best 'value' and how can you get any better than free. They don't consider the downside anymore that Taylor Swift did when she assigned her Copyright in her music the wound up in the hand of somebody she has an extreme dislike towards (ex-BF?). People that sleep their way to the top get within site of the summit when the news breaks about how they got there and the scaffolding takes a tumble as they aren't going to be allowed into those tops spots and that means their "usefulness" has come to an end.
Rush got to where they were by being really really good and touring relentlessly, not by paying to be in fanzines or running ads. There's a tremendous number of avenues for an artist these days to gain a following AND retain their Copyrights and possibly make a living at it that don't rely at all on Twitter or any social media company. Sure, it might help, but you have to understand the cost. If a band I'm in records a song and uploads to our page on FB, we would have granted FB and all-encompassing, perpetual license to the song with no royalties and no credits. But we still have the Copyright!
This might be true, I don't have any knowledge to argue with the idea that a *new* act has other avenues. The situation for established acts (for small values of 'established') is different though, if they transition to another platform they have to rebuild their following, and that results in a sudden and potentially disastrous loss of income. And then there are all the other creatives who can't just go on tour (authors, photographers, artists) who have been relying on Twitter to promote their work for years. Believe me, it really works . And then there are the tradesmen with twitter logos painted on their vans with links that genuinely bring in trade. They're going to have to repaint those vans, Then there's all the companies with twitter links on their websites, and stationery, and branded merch, and etc etc etc.
Now you can argue, and I might agree, that a platform that doesn't know who you are and only cares about its own profits is a very shaky foundation to build a career on. But it's not that different from simply having a normal job.
But what's worst about this is that it's a vanity move by an egomaniac obsessed with a letter of the alphabet - there's no rational reason for it and it certainly doesn't make any sense to throw away a brand that has literally become part of the vocabulary. It's going to cause a lot of financial pain for a lot of people for no reason other than it's the whim of a spoiled brat.
"And then there are the tradesmen with twitter logos painted on their vans with links that genuinely bring in trade."
Why is that better than finding a catchy domain name and putting their own web site address on the side of their van? Why would a creative build a following on Social Media and not be driving those people to their own site? Putting in the time and effort using somebody else's website is silly. For any number of reasons the use of that could be taken away with no notice. People have built YouTube channels without a net and become the victim of a complaint attack that's lost them the use of the channel for a period of time or an outright ban. Sellers on Amazon sellers have been summarily dropped/cancelled when Amazon sees a good profit in the same product and leaves those sellers with a garage full of merchandise scrambling to find another venue to sell it.
Artists don't 'tour', but they can display their work in galleries, shows and advertise in their market. I work PT as a photographer and seek out local customers that I can build into long term clients. Exposure worldwide is more of a detriment to my business as I have to respond to inquiries from out of my area and try to be polite about it since one never knows if it could lead to local work. That already happens enough as it is.
>> Why is that better than finding a catchy domain name and putting their own web site address on the side of their van?
Because that costs money and time and skills that most tradesmen don't have, nor do they want to acquire. Being a self-employed tradie is bloody hard work, believe me I've been there. Twitter is easy. You can post a couple of photos of your work every day and "get into people's conciousnesses" because those people are on Twitter (or Facebook, or whatever) anyway. Nobody's going to see johnbloggsbuilders.co.uk written on the side of a van and think "ooh I must visit that later". A friend of mine does *all* her advertising on Facebook and Twitter and is literally turning customers away she's so busy. Another tried to set up his own website and domain and get a businesslike email address and it did absolutely nothing for his business except cost him money.
What is interesting is how many are currently continuing to use the old logo. BBC News last night had some story with a Tweeter angle, so on their media screens they had the Twitter bird logo.
So Musk might have changed his logo for Twitter, but don’t expect others to update their sites to use it instead of the highly recognisable Twitter bird.
"A friend of mine does *all* her advertising on Facebook and Twitter and is literally turning customers away she's so busy. Another tried to set up his own website and domain and get a businesslike email address and it did absolutely nothing for his business except cost him money."
Where will all of those leads go if FB cancels the account or changes policies? It's certainly not hard to muck up a website, but there are plenty of people that will do that sort of work for a reasonable price. I know of several within a few blocks of my home. All of them don't charge that much after the initial work is done. I've got 8 domains at this point and they cost me very little. 5 of them are sitting in limbo as they are part of ideas for new ventures. I locked them up so they'd be there and can always let them expire if I like. I do my own web work, but I get help from time to time setting up new functions. I'd like to do a whole revamp and I'm thinking about farming that out.
Posting a few photos daily of the work you are doing is senseless. I expect they are poor quality cell phone snapshots. I see those all of the time from tradesman where they should be having a professional come in and make photos of their finished work. Much of the photo work I do is for estate agents and I license photos to tradesman all of the time. Since I'm already in making photos to sell the property, it's often likely I will have a photo useful to them or could make one specially with little fuss, in minutes. That's much cheaper than if they hired me separately and the photos are orders of magnitude higher quality. If a web designer has built a site properly, all the user has to do is upload the image to a folder and it will display in their portfolio. At the same time, they should take the lowest quality photo out of the collection or they'd soon wind up with more photos than anybody would ever look at.
>> Where will all of those leads go if FB cancels the account or changes policies?
Doesn't matter. She gets repeat business and new business from word of mouth now. FB/Twitter was all she needed to get going, and it was free and she already knew how to do it. She doesn't really need to keep doing it any more, but she does because she likes it. She has no interest in setting up her own website. Customers generally contact her through phone, text, or whatsapp so she barely needs an email address either.
>> Posting a few photos daily of the work you are doing is senseless. I expect they are poor quality cell phone snapshots
It's not if it works. You have to do it regularly or the dreaded algorithms will relegate you to the sewer end of people's feeds. Cell phone snapshots for this purpose are as good as DSLRs these days, especially considering the enormous compression FB uses. She's got a good eye and knows how to work with natural light, I couldn't do better with a DSLR even though I sell photos commercially.
There may be some who rely on Twitter (as was), but common sense dictates that mirroring content on as many platforms as possible maximises the exposure an artist will get.
The obvious platforms being the likes of Instagram or Flickr, but other more niche platforms do exist which, presumably, deal only with the art itself, rather than be encumbered by the baggage associated with traditional social media sites.
For examples - see https://expertphotography.com/social-media-sites-for-photographers (some of the sites listed I hadn't heard of - but then I'm not a photographer) - note that they *don't* list Twitter at all!
There are a fair number of artists and other creators that relied on twitter to advertise and support their work. A good alternative hasn't really arisen, and if they are transitioning to some other network they need to rebuild their entire following.
I'm not sure that's quite as dire as made out. Most of those people are on patreon and have built followings on Mastodon/ActivityPub, as well as Flickr/DeviantArt/Instagram/YouTube/Discord/Twitch and now Threads. Twitter was an important way of advertising their work, but that's really died off over the past year. The writing has been on the wall for a while.
"The Saudi Kingdom Holding Company might have something to say about that."
And this lends some credence to Elon's dad letting slip that Elon employs about 100 people for personal security. I'm not so sure that numbers will be useful if he burns the company to the ground and holding company is displeased. If Elon is lucky, maybe they'll accept all of his remaining unencumbered Tesla stock in recompense.
UK streaming service ITVX undergoes "emergency rebrand": https://twitter.com/ITVX/status/1683424240358367232
Technically, mercury isn't a neurotoxin, as it doesn't specifically target neuron cell bodies, axons, glia-cells or signal transduction at synapses.
It is damaging brain tissue, heavily so in fact, but also the liver, kidneys and lungs.
The primary mechanism of Hg-Toxicity is inhibition of selene-dependent enzymes, which include many biomolecules defending cells against oxidative damage. The fact that Hg is especially damaging to the brain is a by-product of the fact that the brain consumes a great deal of the oxygen available to the body, necessitating constant defense against free oxygen radicals.
Plus XCom (the name, not the domain) is owned by microprose (I guess by now Ubisoft bought everyone, let's hope for that, they are a litigious bunch).
X <- signing my name in good Western movie fashion, nothing to do with the "company"....
"True, but x.org and x.com have remarkable similar logos."
There's only so much you can do and have the letter still recognizable as the letter.
If anybody files suit, I doubt the company (Elon's) will be around long enough to have to fight it given the lead times for trials.
Not so sure about that specific article. MS don't really use X on it's own and Meta's is described as white and blue, so no real issue there. It's important to remember that it's not the X being trademarked since it's nigh on if not outright impossible to trademark a letter or single common word in all aspects. It's the stylised X, colour and graphics, ie the whole "look and feel" and the scope of usage, eg Windows as a GUI frontend/OS can't stop people advertising and selling generic "windows" in every other field. I still think Twitter are on a hiding to nothing with this and will inevitably be sued over this specific trademark, but not by MS or Meta, simply because their logo is too simple and generic.
"For the innocent amongst you, years ago Elmo tried to make an app called "X". At the time, the other board members kicked him out and renamed the company "Paypal"."
It's a bit more complicated than that. Cofinity was the company that started the service PayPal and changed its name to PayPal.
Common Sense Skeptic does a good breakdown of where PayPal came from and where Elon fit in with that story:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-FGwDDc-s8
Yes. However, it's also exactly identical to Unicode character 1D54F - because that's all it is. And if you examine the full "X" logo in detail, you'll notice that the scratch in the background doesn't reach the X because all the logo creator did was put U+1D54F in a black square and slap it onto the backdrop. It's the epitome of laziness.
Yes. Interesting is that there are different ways to represent certain characters, some via composition, some have a similar glyph in different languages (the Latin, Greek and Cyrillic alphabets and I think Futhark have some sort of X), which is a mess, since some idiots now allow Unicode in domain names...
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To play devil's advocate, there's only so much you can do with something as simple as an "X". (And with a company name like that, it'd be weird if their logo *wasn't* an "X").
Regardless, I'd say the X11 logo is marginally more interesting in terms of design (i.e. the two unjoined pieces that form into a single "X").
> "This is an extremely risky move because with 'X', Musk is essentially starting over while its competition is afoot."
That's bad news, because we've already seen what afoot might do to a newly-reborn Twitter.
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Considering the toxic content that is on Twitter calling it the X -Crememt app is not far off what it will be.
How much is the rebrand costing when they are supposed to be cost cutting its nothing more than a new name for the same old 5hit, talk about trying to polish a turd?
How decidedly useless are the people running the website?
The https://twitter.com/favicon.ico is still the bird...
Also, this is a very silly move but as I've said many times the only reason he bought was to destroy it. Too many people with ideas billionaires fear congregating together and sharing those ideas. You could say they could go and do it on threads but if I know the lizard man that will have it locked down for that sort of thing.
Musk is clearly determined to end twitter.
I see no reason why he didn’t just launch his new thing and incorporate the old with the old name.
A new twitter suddenly evens up the playing field with the also new alternatives.
People likely only stick to twitter because of recognition which is part of its utility, a ridiculous new name won’t help keep people about.
Also, Zuckerborg showed Musk how to do it:
The old front end - Instagram (Twitter).
The new front end - Threads (X).
Call the new front end "X, brought to you by Twitter" or vice-versa in the same way as Instagram/Threads.
The same account info is shared between the two websites and a few more DB tables and columns added for the new front end. That means you start off with n million users.
If he's such a rocket scientist he should have thought of that first, but he didn't. But when he saw it happen, he should have realised that was the way to do it, slammed the brakes on renaming everything to X, and done the same thing. But he didn't, because he's just a dim boy from a rich family with an ego that comes from being from a rich family and he's stuck in a loop of making something called X because he thinks its a cool name.
"Yacc's tweet: "Lights. Camera. X!""
I'm waiting to see what Linda's exit strategy is. Shouldn't be long now. If she didn't stitch up a magnificent package, that will be a warning to anybody else she may apply with that she isn't very clever. I'd love to see a poll here on how many people thought she'd be thinking of the role at Twitter as a temp job until something better becomes available.
"MusXrat doesn't pay for those that desert his "aura of awesomeness""
I'd expect the difference between an executive contract where the executive writes it (or their attorney does) vs. an employee contract that's foisted on the new hire with no or little input from them is going to be quite striking. Given Elon's past actions, I'd include a clause that triples or quadruples the severance for delays/court fights and also puts Elon personally on the hook for the payment in addition to the company should the company not pay. Banks will do this sort of thing for small business loans so the owner, even if the company is an LLC or similar form, is separately liable for the debt.
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There's a short story by Edgar Allan Poe called "X-ing a Paragrab." The crucial "paragrab" is this:
Sx hx, Jxhn! hxw nxw? Txld yxu sx, yxu knxw. Dxn’t crxw, anxther time, befxre yxu’re xut xf the wxxds! Dxes yxur mxther knxw yxu’re xut? Xh, nx, nx! sx gx hxme at xnce, nxw, Jxhn, tx yxur xdixus xld wxxds xf Cxncxrd! Gx hxme tx yxur wxxds, xld xwl, — gx! Yxu wxnt? Xh, pxh, pxh, Jxhn, dxn’t dx sx! Yxu’ve gxt tx gx, yxu knxw! sx gx at xnce, and dxn’t gx slxw; fxr nxbxdy xwns yxu here, yxu knxw. Xh, Jxhn, Jxhn, if yxu dxn’t gx yxu’re nx hxmx — nx! Yxu’re xnly a fxwl, an xwl; a cxw, a sxw; a dxll, a pxll; a pxxr xld gxxd-fxr-nxthing-tx-nxbxdy lxg, dxg, hxg, xr frxg, cxme xut xf a Cxncxrd bxg. Cxxl, nxw — cxxl! Dx be cxxl, yxu fxxl! Nxne xf yxur crxwing, xld cxck! Dxn’t frxwn sx — dxn’t! Dxn’t hxllx, nxr hxwl, nxr grxwl, nxr bxw-wxw-wxw! Gxxd Lxrd, Jxhn, hxw yxu dx lxxk! Txld yxu sx, yxu knxw, but stxp rxlling yxur gxxse xf an xld pxll abxut sx, and gx and drxwn yxur sxrrxws in a bxwl!
Dude was ahead of this time.
I was anticipating the Reg article and thinking of clever or insulting things to say about it.
You guys beat me to all the good comments, so I'll just wish that The Reg had a clown icon like the clown face emoji (I had pasted it in here but I got an error "the post contains some characters we can't support) because that's what Musk is constantly proving himself to be! Even people who support his rightward turn of the platform can see that by now - how is a rebrand of Twitter to 'X' in any way helping the cause?
So instead I'll offer a pint to all those who beat me to all the good comments.
Musk is like a petulant child. He's been surrounded too long by ass-kissers and ay-sayers and is starting to believe his own fantasies. Twitter has already lost $25 billion in market value and if he continues on this dumpster-fire path he's gonna lose the entire $45 billion he spent buying it.
OTOH he's still the world's richest man and could probably survive losing even that amount.
"OTOH he's still the world's richest man and could probably survive losing even that amount."
By some accounting he's not. If you just look in the assets column, he looks pretty good, but if you also check the other side of the ledger and do a little arithmetic, it's not as rosy.
The banks are going to make out like bandits when Elon burns to the ground. All of that Tesla stock that's been pledged as security against loans might take an initial hit, but it won't be long before it recovers once Tesla is endowed with professional management and made into a real company with real financial metrics to justify its market cap. The stock could then rise or maybe fall, but will at least be much more stable and in tune with reality.
"Probably fall, considering the build quality of tesla models I've seen."
That's where the professional management comes in. Build quality will be put ahead of adding yet another 'feature' to the cars.
I've been paying attention to what things are important to me when using my car and what's being offered these days as features is just like the title functions in the old camcorders. It's something you play with for an hour or so and never use again. I'm an old cuss and twisting around to check behind me isn't as easy so a back up camera is a good thing. A charge flap that opens automatically when I wave the charging plug at it is just something that's going to break when I'm in the middle of nowhere and needing a charge. I'll have it off with a big screwdriver and repair it later with something more manual. How lazy to you have to be?
If you're that rich and powerful it's almost inevitable you'll start to believe your own lies. This has happened with almost all (if not all) wealthy and influential people.
Hitler thought his genius of attacking France through the Ardennes was the reason for that country's defeat. In hindsight it was just luck and incompetence on the French side. But this victory led him to believe he could defeat both the Soviet Union and the U.S. We all know how that panned out. In fact, I believe that Germany would've lost the war even if it had fought only one of those superpowers. Fighting both was simply a fools errand.
There are graduate level courses on branding and brand management. Big companies with well-known brands have to be very sensitive when making changes once they have a product or service that's established. If you sell beer (loosely defined) and have a been building it up as the beer a certain sort of person drinks, if you abruptly change that, you'll lose your market. If you then go on to score own goals by handling that mistake badly, well, game over or at best you won't be in the finals this time around. Coke learned that messing with the original formula was a bad idea and even when they went to having both, the new version fell by the wayside. Cherry and Vanilla Coke were great ideas as they already had a following at venues that made them onsite and they added to the brand without touching the core product. Offering a Corvette in a new color isn't going to decimate sales. Putting them out in pink and slanting all of the advertising to imply that gay women are the main sort of person for the car would be bad. That's a big shift in the predominate demographic of Corvette buyers. If there were a market there, GM could easily design and market a car to bring in those sorts of buyers. I'm not sure that still a very good idea anymore than putting a bumper sticker on that's about a very polarizing topic.
All Twitter is (was) is a brand. There's nothing else there and especially now with unpaid rents, lawsuits for violation zoning laws, severance pay requirements, legal compliance and all sort of of other things considered naughty. Now, compound that with a whole new rebranding that going to cost millions in just signage, letterhead, biz cards and the time it will take to update all traces of the previous logo and branding. Office furnishings are worth nothing, computers are like cars in they depreciate massively as soon as they leave the box and on an accelerated pace after that. There isn't much in the way of physical assets that could be liquidated to raise money. There's no divisions that can be spun off to keep the core service going. Kill the brand, kill the company.
Threads is a big competitor not only to Twitter but to Elon's dream of One App to Rule them all and in the darkness bind them. The news has been very critical, but real journalists disappeared years ago. Threads got huge numbers of sign-ups initially as people scrambled to make sure they got their handle on Threads so it was the same everywhere with others scrambling to acquire user names they can sell back to those people who were slow off the mark for a nice little profit. Now that the frenzy is dying back, Threads isn't seeing gazillions of hits a second. That doesn't mean it's failed, it means that people have set themselves up with an account and will be slowly exploring the service. There's also a dearth of tools to manage and cross-manage one's social media presence that includes Threads, but that's rapidly being filled in.
I've see companies go down because they changed their logo. People don't recognize or associate your company with the new logo and you end up losing all your brand value. To the consumer you're a new brand that has to earn their goodwill, and since you start of without you're essentially doomed.
This happened to Sansui and Sanyo IMHO.
I had a look at the X and the most that could be said of it is that it might pass for a stylized greek Chi χ (χ)
Just off the top of my head I might have gone for a stylized version of da Vinci's Vitruvian Man - with the arms and legs forming the X.
Based in what I imagine of twitter's demographics - even better - a very stylized but clearly identifiable woman. Although a short skirt or wrap (laplap) around the waist for modesty might be advisable.
I can see the cartoonists having the blue bird on its back with an X made from two bandaids over its heart. "Not dead just pining for the hordes."
Having got the colour right its almost as though the Pythons had seen the future so perhaps the future also casts long shadows. Or imbecility is atemporal.
Monday morning on the local news, we watched the SF police department telling the MuskMinions to cease and desist, because they didn't pull the proper permits to make the logo change. Elon's been fighting with San Francisco over signage for months. Seems he can't handle the City telling him "no". I predict he'll be moving the HQ to Texas, where they love slurping high-tech arse.
Just saw this on the BBC news. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/technology-66300332
Looks like the Xtw@t and his Xmorons don't like to comply with local byelaws. Did they sack the guy who organises such things for Xtw@tter then? Apparently dropping obsolete logos and letters on pedestrians heads is the way to go. The slow-mo car-crash continues. <LOL>
Yup, just came to post https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/jul/25/elon-musk-x-rebrand-twitter-sign-removal
This is already going well, isn't it?
I know of a fair few artists and crafts sellers --- and nature groups, here in the West who utilize Twitter [ closed to me anyway cos I stopped viewing it anyway half a decade ago ]; but more personally I go to Danbooru a lot, having a passion for Chibis, and I've noticed nearly all Japanese/Chinese anime artists rely on Twitter accounts: This rebranding idiocy could have a devastating effect across Asia, just because some twerp in America got up one morning with a demented idea...
As all Rebrandings are.
Its like what a child would do if they were a billionaire. Yes it might be a toxic place but there are some useful thinks, WHS_Carpets, RMCRetro, The great Translation but its also a massive brand name that's been burned into peoples minds, so why would you change it. Its like changing the name of Hoover at the height of their success, everyone calls a vacuum cleaner a Hoover (in words of Alan Partridge when he explains about Tannoy)