What does Twitter's new logo really represent? Twitter's new logo isn't just an X, it's a very specific form of X, and not only does it have a meaning, it also has some history behind it. As The Reg reported earlier this week, Twitter has a new logo. The blue bird logo the site has used since 2012 is no more, but we found its co-creator Martin Grasser's thread about how …
There's rebranding and there's rebranding. What those cola companies did was play around with styling - the Twitter/X is a complete change of name and a logo of a completely different style to the one it replaces.
For an example of similar scale rebranding in the soft drink sector, take the recent example of Lilt Fanta Lemon & Lime, which was almost universally derided.
Very difficult to put legal action on anyone if the name on the paperwork is wrong.
Kind of like how Prince changed his name to a symbol to frustrate lawsuit and indecency charges.
If that's not your name on the paperwork because your name is a symbol, and they put a similar but different symbol,
Then there are no charges against you until they filed the paperwork properly
You could argue that bird song is short and users identified with idea of being like the birds in the trees, though I always found it a bit naff. The 140 character limit stemmed from the restrictions in SMS, I think. Once you've established the brand it doesn't really matter, which is why rebranding is usually an expensive mistake, though tweaks are common: both Twitter and Dropbox got agencies to polish up their original ideas and Coca-Cola went through many iterations.
Well, we do use "twittering" to describe a group of people who are having an inconsequential natter, often bonding over a shared dislike of important topics, like how annoying it is they moved the flower baskets outside the laundrette on the high street (the water drips down the back of your neck).
Or the elderly great aunt, who fusses around the room, with a continuous stream of tidbits about all the second cousins you hardly ever see, jumping from one to the other as she suddenly remembers a little anecdote.
And a little bird was related to typing no more than 140 characters how?
I always assumed it was the sound: "tweet!" that early phones made when an sms (text) was delivered.
Once long ago cell phones (gsm) could only make and receive voice calls or send and receive short text messages.
Hard to believe now. And without on screen keyboards. :)
Hoover was unrelated to vacuum cleaners. It just became the dominant brand and hence the generic for the product i.e. "I hoover my carper with a Vax". The same could be said of Google which became verb (though I use Startpage). It doesn't matter if the brand name was appropriate but not now. International Business Machines is now a service/software company - but it is still IBM. They also keep the icon designed to be shown on character only monitors. They are not going to throw either away anytime soon.
It's this unique identity of the name/logo/product belonging to few companies. Every mention of the word is a free advert for the product. All thrown away. X starts not even at the beginning of brand re-build because people will still remember deadname Twiiter/Tweet/ReTweet that negates the brand. That's why there are so many shaking heads in the industry. It's not about the prettiness or not of X. It would be the same whatever he changed name he chose. Everybody is wrong - apart from Elon?
Place your bets!
In the early days, it was a blocky grey L lying flat, with a diagonal blue bar on top of it to make a sort of X.
In Excel 95, the L became a darker blue and the whole thing was more upgright.
Then it changed to green in Excel 2000.
In 2010, the base of the L became a lot shorter, and in 2013 it disappeared altogether.
The Mac logo was much the same untel Excel 2001 when it became 3 stylised drops of green water in the shape of an X. Those became flatter and more matte through to 2008.
In 2011, it was two bent green lines forming the top and bottom of the X, and in 2016 it returned to being the same as the Windows version.
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There's a nice thread on "X" or maybe it was a TikTok from a rebranding specialist pointing out that just sticking an "X" logo on your web site without retiring/replacing all the rest is about as shoddy as you can get (no surprise from Mr Musk) So Tweet/Twitter is still all through the interface and on the Apple App (and Play Store App) etc.
Well presumably there will be an app update where the app changes its name and logo, and they'll clean up the web site.
Probably the reason it is in this state is because Elon is such a tool he just decided "now's the time to rebrand with my stupid X obsession" and didn't tell anyone on the software teams. Otherwise they could have had all this stuff ready to roll out right after he tweeted. Instead he's probably screaming at them to work faster and quit taking breaks, all the software guys suffering because the CEO is a gibbering idiot who doesn't understand the concept of planning in advance.
Of course, we're assuming it's incompetence. Lone has enough money he can quite literally be the world's biggest troll. Maybe he just decided to rename it X with a generic Unicode character because it'll freak out so many people.
I mean, tossing the globally recognised bird logo as an actual plan would be ridiculous, right? So, this has to be some grade A trolling just because he can...
In their Monday tweet the ITVX bird was the same colour as everything else - yellow (...of course, being monochrome it would be straightforward to adapt it to the appropriate shade of blue as required).
The artist kxlider* also uses 𝕏 as a logo, but apparently hadn't formally protected his use of it, as he lamented later the same day.
(* me neither, I just happened to read a news article that mentioned both)
"The letter X in general, though, is also a registered trademark of multiple companies, including both Microsoft since 2003, in the context of its Xbox video games console, and Meta since 2019, in the context of social networks"
If Meta owns a trademark on X in the context of Social networks, surely then Twitter rebanding to X is going to infringe their trademark? As Twitter is definitely a social network.
I had no idea Facebook had trademarked "X" (why?) and he may not have known/remembered either. Defense of the trademark (i.e. making Musk rebrand to something else) is going to be a lot easier if they can show they were doing something with it or planning to do something with it.
So I'm guessing there's a small team at Facebook working up something using 'X' so they will be able to show the judge that they didn't just trademark it and forget about it. Musk will of course spare no expense fighting it in court because for some childish reason his whole ego is tied up in this 'X' business (if he was a 90s kid in the US I guess he'd instead want to brand with that stylized 'S' that was so popular for whatever reason)
I notice Musk hasn't said a word about the cage match since Zuck said he'd be down to do it, so I'm assuming he chickened out once someone clued him into the fact that a guy like him with zero physical fitness can't rely on size to beat someone with martial arts training even if they are smaller. But it should happen, and ownership of the 'X' trademark should be the prize!
"I had no idea Facebook had trademarked "X" (why?) and he may not have known/remembered either."
You can't trademark "X", only a stylized logo of the letter. Simple words can't be trademarked either so you find "Window" is legally "Microsoft Windows" and the office suite is "Microsoft Office". Apple, formerly named "Apple Computer Company", is now Apple Inc (not Apple, Inc(note comma)). They wouldn't be granted a trademark for just Apple.
I've been through patents (have 2), trademarks (had several) and Copyright (loads and loads). Trying to get something too simple rammed through isn't a good use of time. I expect that a number of my Copyrighted images wouldn't hold up in court, but it's easiest to do big batches rather than agonize over each one individually. If I find something I show it to my attorney. If he says it's not worth pursuing through being too generic, I go with his experience. If I went to him wanting to Trademark "M", I expect he'd want a big retainer and also tell me, "fat chance".
== . If I went to him wanting to Trademark "M", I expect he'd want a big retainer and also tell me, "fat chance".
Maybe Musk will throw enough of his cash around to push though on "X" and open the floodgates. Then you can have your "M" and I can have - hmm?
Got it - I'll have "Q" then really troll those idiots with The Official Q(tm) Anon.
Things vary by jurisdiction. In England & Wales, you can trademark common words, provided they have a unique grahpical representation.
"Microsoft Windows" is not trademarked, but "Windows" is trademarked by Microsoft: https://trademarks.ipo.gov.uk/ipo-tmcase/page/Results/1/UK00003660320
"Apple" is trademarked by Apple Computer: https://trademarks.ipo.gov.uk/ipo-tmcase/page/Results/1/UK00000922669
They might have to argue about whether Meta is using that trademark. You have to either be using it for something or have serious plans to do so. I'm unaware of any Meta property using the name (that's not saying much since I don't know much about Meta's products anyway). They've also had it for four years and were able to make their latest social media product in months, so they might have a hard time explaining why they hadn't built the product they wanted to use with the trademark yet. So Twitter has the choice to attempt to argue that Meta has left the trademark unused and therefore should lose it. That might lead to a long legal fight which will manage to be more boring than it should be.
I'm not aware that you have to actually use a trademark. You do have fo renew its registration, and defend it actively, but use it, I don't think so.
That's how plenty of famous brands that have disappeared due to mergers or whatever are still actively protected. They've not suddenly become usable.
The use you have to demonstrate can be quite small, even as small as keeping around the original website and redirecting it to products you make, or attaching the trademark to something but not putting any focus into that part. However, trademarks are challenged on the basis that they are no longer in use, and part of the renewal of a trademark is affirming that you have used and continue to use the trademark, because otherwise you are deemed to have abandoned it. At least one case I know of involved someone intentionally making some products and pricing them unreasonably high in order to be able to keep a trademark they didn't want others to have, but they didn't want to use at the time. They were required to have some token effort to make a product or service available under the trademark or it would either be automatically canceled or more easily challenged by someone else. Keeping a trademark may be easy, but it's not like a domain name where if you keep paying the money, you can have it forever.
"At least one case I know of involved someone intentionally making some products and pricing them unreasonably high in order to be able to keep a trademark they didn't want others to have,"
That could be a good way to position a trademark as representing expensive products. As long as it's not publicly traded, there's no requirement that the company's financials are published that would show zero sales. One could make a whole line of wares priced stupidly high and if anybody place an order for the ones that only exist as CGI mockups, a nice form letter can be sent about how there are supply chain issues or that the product has recently been discontinued and there is no remaining stock. Hmmmmmmm.
"If Meta owns a trademark on X in the context of Social networks, surely then Twitter rebanding to X is going to infringe their trademark? As Twitter is definitely a social network."
Elon will just post a Tweet? that calls the company a "not-a-social-media-network" just like the "not-a-flamethrower" and "not a flame trench". The disappointment is that he'll get away with it where you and I would have our backs up against the wall and wind up much poorer and our freedom of travel constrained for a period of time.
I for one hope it stops the "hate" ( I'll use the wokesters favourite word here) comments that have become so prevalent with anything to do with Musk..
I don't care about Twitter etc but I do care about the level of comments en El Reg. It's become just another echo chamber for those that have no actual opinions on the subject at hand but rather a place where they spout out some nonsense about a man that they do not know, will probably never meet, and if they did they most certainly would not have the courage to use their infantile remarks to his face.
How about we get back to actually making constructive comments rather the childish ideological nonsense.
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I for one would be happy to tell Musk what I think of him to his face. He's an insecure bully, who fakes technical knowledge but compensates by throwing money at people who are much smarter than he is. The companies that he has bought into that are sucessful appear to be successful because they don't let him interfere with the core development work as much as he'd clearly like to. He's an incredible negotiator, financially smart and brilliant at marketing, but the public image of technical genius is largely hype.
None of that is ideological. I don't care about his politics, or his wealth - but I do follow the news closely, because the large tech companies that include Musk's are directly impacting the world around us - it's natural to follow both the positive and negative aspects of those changes, and the behaviour of the people behind them. In the case of 'X', this also gives us some interesting ideas about what he plans to do with the company in future.
Yes - to date he has made a whole bunch of financial bets, often convincing other large investors and governments to support them, and has in the process built very large and (it seems) profitable businesses. That takes a combination of talent and charisma that many startup founders would kill to have.
Now, whether those gambles turn out to be exactly that - gambles, and whether it turns out that there was more luck than judgement in the successes he's had, we've yet to see. But many people have lost a lot of money betting against Tesla, and many people have tried to recreate those successes without achieving anything.
There's a lot of evidence the guy is technically clueless, and when he's tried to start businesses based on his own ideas (Hyperloop) they've been far less sucessful. Most of the criticisms of him and his behaviour are very well founded in established facts (or in some cases, carefully buried stories). There's also very clear documentary evidence that most of the real innovation has been delayed by years and/or has never been actually delivered. From solar panels, through to habitats on Mars, via Hyperloop and self driving cars, only the lawers can decide whether his claims have just been over optimisitic or willfully fraudlent - but they have certainly been demonstrably wrong.
That doesn't take away from the fact that he's managed to get billions of dollars invested into doing stuff that many people just weren't prepared to do. Financially smart, for sure. The rest... well...
"and when he's tried to start businesses based on his own ideas (Hyperloop) they've been far less sucessful."
You mean "VacTrain"? That was patented over 100 years ago by Robert Goddard.
To be fair (not really...), Elon produced a document about his Hyperloop, made it open-source (didn't have a choice as it had been previously patented) and championed the idea, but didn't start a company to build anything to do with it. He's cooled on any further talk on the subject as every venture that did take it on is gone now (any left?) and somebody might have been able to get him to understand how stupid and unworkable it is. Even HSR can be inappropriate for a particular circumstance through being too fast with too many added engineering/building costs for it to be viable. I don't agree 100% with Thunderf00t, but he does point out some fatal flaws to Hyperloop that are still around from the Vactrain days which still seem insurmountable (bloody physics).
"and has in the process built very large and (it seems) profitable businesses."
In addition to Tesla, which he muscled his way into, what business do you speak of? Surely not SpaceX. They have to raise giant mounds of money through private investmen every year to keep it going.
Oh, you want constructive feedback?
Musk is a trust fund clown who has no formal engineering chops, but made a lot of money from his PayPal shares - which they didn't take from him when they sacked him for incompetence.
Since then he has ploughed that money into tech adjacent companies, which got him some kudos, but by all accounts at those companies there were entire teams set up to manage him - to stop his bad ideas from being actioned, and to make his less bad but still silly, unworkable ideas, into something useful.
For example, I won't pretend that SpaceX landing boosters isn't wildly impressive, but he didn't engineer that - and it wasn't even a new idea - he just paid people to make it happen out of his functionally infinite money supply that wasn't tied up in civil service/govt red tape. He just said "make thunderbird one", and threw money at the problem. It was the money and talented engineers with a free hand who made it actually happen.
At Twitter, he has no management team to contain him, and we're seeing him raw and unedited. And that raw, unedited Musk is a rampant right wing bigot with serious fascistic leanings who has no idea how to run a company and barely any idea how to communicate publicly, berates people below him with no concept of what he's doing in the process (See the special member of staff on the 'do not fire' list who he fired, and who almost cost him tens of millions of dollars on the spot, because he didn't pay attention to the massive warnings on the HR file....), and demonstrably has no idea how to run a business.
The reason there is hate for him is because had he not had his PayPal shares, he's just be another trust fund loser causing problems for a small amount of people, instead of right now where he has already caused major problems for thousands of people through his actions at Twitter directly, and with his ludicrous mismanagement of the platform, he's risking the livelihoods of tens of thousands of more who used Twitter for marketing, comms and research.
For the rest of us, we're laughing at him for demonstrating that no, billionaires are not special - it's entirely possible to become rich while being dumb and lucky, and that's exactly why they shouldn't be worshiped or put on a pedastal.
If you want go drink Musks piss, that's fine, but don't for a moment pretend that it's out of some egalitarian desire for 'constructive criticism' - if you knew of Musks history, as many of us here do, then you'd know that the negative feelings towards him are entirely justified and watching him crash and burn publicly is hilarious.
"If you want go drink Musks piss, that's fine, but don't for a moment pretend that it's out of some egalitarian desire for 'constructive criticism' - if you knew of Musks history, as many of us here do, then you'd know that the negative feelings towards him are entirely justified and watching him crash and burn publicly is hilarious.""
This is a perfect example of what I commented about... It's truly sad.
Steven Raith: "Musk is a trust fund clown who has no formal engineering chops, but made a lot of money from his PayPal shares - which they didn't take from him when they sacked him for incompetence."
I don't like him (or rather his public persona) much more than you do, I think some but not all of your rant is justified, but you do have to give him credit for making things happen. Without Musk, where would Tesla be now? Space X? If he wants to burn $44bn on breaking Twitter then that's his to own. If Twitter users wanted a different outcome, somebody amongst the 350m users could have put together a better bid - in fact nobody cared that much.
The bloke is a pantomime villain for the howlers of the left, and as such earns his keep.
"but you do have to give him credit for making things happen. Without Musk, where would Tesla be now? Space X?"
I mean, I literally covered this:
"For example, I won't pretend that SpaceX landing boosters isn't wildly impressive, but he didn't engineer that - and it wasn't even a new idea - he just paid people to make it happen out of his functionally infinite money supply that wasn't tied up in civil service/govt red tape. He just said "make thunderbird one", and threw money at the problem. It was the money and talented engineers with a free hand who made it actually happen."
I'm not going to give literally every example of where he has - or more specifically, his money has - been useful to a company. Doesn't mean he's any less deserving of mockery.
"If Twitter users wanted a different outcome, somebody amongst the 350m users could have put together a better bid - in fact nobody cared that much."
No-one was flat out stupid enough to pay such a massively overinflated price for Twitter, not even Musk - which is why he was sued by Twitter when he tried to walk away from the deal he signed to buy it, at that massively overinflated price so that he could put a meme number in it.
I agree that he's not a complete idiot and he's been prepared to put his money into companies that the rest of the investment industry wouldn't touch: SpaceX and Tesla and not Uber or Groupon. But many of the investments have benefitted significantly from the cheap cost of debt since the financial crisis. This has made risky investments, well, less risky and it's no coincidence that his businesses flourished only after this. The buyout of SolarCity would have bankrupted him at another time and his debt-driven business model has allowed him to compete favourably with competitors. Hence, as interest rates rise, his companies margins fall as he starts to compete with competitors who finance their businesses from cashflow.
As for Twitter, I hope it fails and he and his fellow investors take a bath. It might teach others a lesson, for a short time at least.
"Where would Tesla be now?"
Given all he really did was throw money at it... which any other multi (m/b)illionaire could have done, then hired the same set of engineers, and got the same end result.
(Mine's the one with the Nobel Prize speech in the pocket, for discovering parallel universes)
"Without Musk, where would Tesla be now? Space X?"
Marc, Martin and Ian had a different vision for Tesla Motors and it's hard to say where they'd be, but it doesn't mean they wouldn't have been wildly successful with electric vehicles. One thing is for sure, the Roadster would have been delivered on time and at the promised price. I'd also expect that v2.0 would have been out years ago and v6 or 7 would be the current production.
SpaceX isn't likely solvent on its own at this point. The Falcon 9 program should be doing quite well if looked at individually. It's a very proven launch system at this point with a number of customers. Starlink and Starship are both burning through money like mad. Both will need to be really fantastic money makers before Elon runs out of OPM (Other People's Money) for SpaceX to not get auctioned off as part and pieces. Forget Mars. Elon is not going to be sending people to Mars. He's not even working on any of the required equipment that would be necessary to go in the rocket for a trip such as that. A rocket with no abort system. Blue Origin had a booster failure and its capsule abort worked perfectly. Of course they knew it had a good chance of doing so as they had tested it and were surprised that the booster wasn't perturbed so much that it failed to reach over 100km and land again safely after on the test flight. SpaceX, on the other hand, hasn't even hinted on the barest outline of what they would do. Their Remote Termination System didn't even work properly and after it punched a couple of holes in the fuel tanks of Starship and Booster, it took some time before the booster just exploded from some other cause followed by Starship letting go. Surprisingly, there hasn't been much commentary about all of that debris falling into Mexican territorial waters.
The Starship program could be staring at an uncertain and bleak future if they can't secure approvals to keep blowing stuff up at Boca Chica. They are not going to be allowed to test at Cape Canaveral/Kennedy Space Center where they are building another "not-a-launch-tower".
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Well, to be fair, you did forget to mention the story in TV21 where they modified TB2 to go into space as well. IIRC they also (of course) packed Pod 4 and took a modified TB4 to do the actual rescue in an icy "sea" (mind is telling me it was Titan, but given the existence of Rock Snakes on Mars it may have been an ocean of Venus).
Not sure if that story counts a canon, but maybe we have a *very* avid reader here.
Right after Brony James heart attack yesterday hit the news what is Musk's response? Does he say he hopes he will be all right, or failing to have anything good to say choose to say nothing at all?
Nope, he immediately claims it is probably a side effect of the covid vaccine. Based on zero evidence of course. I'm not even sure if it is known whether he has been vaccinated. If he never was, but he was infected, will he change his tune and claim "it was probably a side effect of long covid damaging his heart muscle"? That's actually much more likely than the vaccine causing it. Of course he won't say that, because it won't fit his bullshit antivax narrative since he decided to go MAGA (which he preaches despite publicly stating he and his family have been vaccinated!)
Fuck him, and everyone who supports him.
Please arrange a meeing with Musk or anyone else you think I would not be willing to tell what I think to their face - the evil robot that calls itself Zuck would be a good shout.
I'll happily tell them exactly how despicable they are and what I think of their companies.
Any approbation that Musk has attracted here is entirely of his own making. Simple factual reporting of what he does, combined with his own pronouncements is more than enough to make him an object of scorn in the eyes of any right thinking individual.
The people who need criticism are those who still indulge in uncritical adulation of the man in the face of all he's done to Twitter, its staff, all the people it owes money to and all the shareholders in his other ventures that have been tainted by his Twitter antics.
Seems to me that Elon is trying to muscle in on some of the unbroken attention given to the orange-coloured ex-president by throwing out similar provacative "own-the-libs" banter which he is sure gets a headline . Sort of like a summit meeting of the narcassists where neither one can stand the attention the other one gets.
That said, its up to us to pay attention or not - but pretty hard to avoid them when one is running for president an the other is most publically running a prominent socal network platform into the ground. We say we we enjoy watching them fail; for them its all about the daily attention and nothing else....have to grudginly acknowledge thier success in this goal.
You want constructive comments? Is that a euphemism for unquestioning support of people you like? If you've read enough of these comments to dislike them, then you already know what their views on Musk are. Yes, some of them express those views negatively, but you don't really need to ask about what their views are; they've explained them at length. Therefore, I must conclude that you aren't looking for "constructive comments", but are instead simply complaining, in the same way that they are, about things you don't like. They don't like Musk, and you don't like expressions of disapproval against Musk.
Your use of the word "wokesters" made that, if anything, even more obvious than the rest. Some people might also express that they've seen as much of complaining about "woke" (whatever the writer is choosing to mean by saying it) as they ever want to, and I have seen people who have made that point. It doesn't stop you from making the post you did, nor should you be required to refrain from posting your views simply because someone doesn't appreciate them.
Didn't downvote, but when you corrupt a popular social media service used by millions to favour certain voices over others while at the same time turning said service into a multi train wreck... I think that entitles huge swathes of the world to say in unison "what the fuck, you massive twat".
Personally, I think he is a nasty piece of work. Murdoch also. And Putin. Should I actually know these people before having such an opinion, or is it sufficient to look at the trail of chaos and destruction that they leave in their wake?
Except, I've met him, twice.
Once during Paypal/eBay merger (I designed the Zero Trust model).
Once on the factory floor at SpaceX in Hawthorne when I was visiting with the X-Prize Foundation.
I used stronger language at TechDirt when someone said something similar to what you said... but:
He's an arrogant, ignorant, jackass.
And *I* an personally sick of his damned apologists, "St Elmo can do no wrong."
Really? You're clinically delusional.
"Once on the factory floor at SpaceX in Hawthorne when I was visiting with the X-Prize Foundation."
I just found my gifts from X-Prize received after winning one of the competitions they administered. I don't recall if Peter came out to watch, but Will, Allison and Nicky were there. Sadly, Allison wouldn't marry me nor even run off to Las Vegas for the weekend in my company. I thought it would look a bit desperate to ask Nicky after that, but she is a doll.
I don't see your comment being relevant here, so it just sounds whiny. The vast majority of criticism of Twitter before and after Musk is not ideological: shit business model, platform full of crap, beloved by journalists because of the low barrier to entry.
Sure, whenever anything vaguely political pops up the flame wars tend to start, even more since the Americanisation of El Reg. But I find that there's still lots of people making good or at least humorous points. When that ceases to be the case I guess I'll move on.
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> We learned that it was constructed like a geometrical diagram, from 15 overlapping circles.
When I read that I first thought that it was referring to the new X logo and was glad to realise the truth.
What is worrying is that the idea of a Design Boutique coming up with an X and claiming that it was "constructed like a geometrical diagram, from 15 overlapping circles" sounded so believable in my head!
Guess I picked the wrong week to give up sniffing joss sticks.
Google's x.company site calls itself "X - The Moonshot Factory"
Musk's x.com site can call itself "X - The Bullshit Factory"
(At the moment x.com redirects me to a twitter.com sign in page, which suggests that someone there didn't know how to make a website that is domain name independent)
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The circles were used for the previous bird logo, not the X. It makes it a bit easier to understand how they got there, since I don't see any way to make an X out of circles without making more trouble for yourself than you need to. The best way would be to use very small circles, but then you could as easily just use pixels.
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I say old bean. That's a bit unfair. ErReg commentards are of the thinking, reading, class - usually employing both communicating brain cells.
We are not at all like the antisocial media denizens - even though we apparently have the same number of arms and legs.
P.S. yes. I did follow that link. Very clever.
> so I am not "folk"?
How to tell:
Do you talk the folk talk (left hand cupped over the ear and starting with a long, drawn out, "Oooooohhhhhh")?
Do you walk the folk walk (bells on ankles, hankie in one hand an stick in the other)?
Do you sit with your beer down Pub of an evening, one hand always ready to open the guitar case (bonus points for a fiddle, double for the pipes) any time there is a silence that needs filling?
Do you find there is always someone willing to sit at your table and engage you in natter (they get bonus points if they can keep both your hands visible to the rest of the patrons, double if they can get you to eat a greasy bag of pork scratchings to keep you occupied)?
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... " What does Twitter's new logo really represent?"
What it represents is the massive, insatiable ego of one sad and lonely man, trying to make his mark on the Universe and failing in his intent quite publicly.
I'd feel sorry for him, if he wasn't such a massive twat.
"with his ludicrous mismanagement of the platform, he's risking the livelihoods of tens of thousands of more who used Twitter for marketing, comms and research"
Anyone who relies on a free service they do not control for anything vital to their livelihoods is already playing a very dangerous game. For all his Muskiness is a bit of a Muppet, I don't have a great deal of sympathy in this specific case.
That said, watching the dumpster fire at the site formerly known as Twitter is entertaining gold.
Be careful, because on those vague terms, a lot of things could come under that. Linux, for example. Sure, it's maintained by multiple people and organizations, and you could technically maintain it yourself. In practice, those organizations are currently working on the basis that the others exist and don't have the ability to maintain it singlehandedly if they shut down, and individual users of Linux in many cases don't have the skills to fix it themselves. I don't think Linux will become unusable, but it could theoretically do so. If it did, would you want to hear people making the argument that, since it was free, anyone who relied on it was stupid and should have relied on some alternative for which they provided money? Because I've heard that argument before even when it was running, and trust me, it was annoying.
"a lot of things could come under that. Linux, for example."
Linux is not a "service". The ability to tweet world-wide is.
I'll have access to the latest FOSS Linux kernel until roughly the heat death of the Universe, or I get bored, whichever comes first. I'll have access[0] to the twitter servers until Musk takes his ball and runs away home with it, and I have absolutely no say in the matter.
[0] Note that this is strictly an example; I personally never bought into the world of twits.
"Many millions world-wide expecting a FREE service to remain usable forever is pretty fucking stupid[0], "
Is it? Do you really think these "free" services are a) actually free and b) philanthropic activities? And who said anything about "forever" apart from you?
"don't you think?"
Yes, I do. Do you?
"Is it?"
Yes, it is.
"Do you really think these "free" services are a) actually free"
No, I do not. The advertisers are paying a pretty penny for access to the merchandise (that would be the users, for those not paying attention).
"b) philanthropic activities?"
Don't be daft. twitter is^Wwas a for-profit organization, and the shareholders liked it that way.
"And who said anything about "forever" apart from you?"
Implied in your "fucking about with service used my many millions worldwide is a pretty dick move" comment ... I agree with you, it IS a dick move. But WTF did those millions expect? "Free" tweeting for life? Not on your nelly ... it's only "free" so long as the advertisers are happy. With the current Boss seemingly intent in running the joint into the ground, and the advertisers grumbling ... well, do the math; It's not exactly calculating Hohmann transfers.
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There is another product with a similar logo. Titanium Software produces a system administration product (useful for tweaking the system internals, and for troubleshooting) for Apple systems. The product is called OnyX and the logo is a letter X with the same thin-stroke + thick stroke scheme. With OnyX, there is a different version corresponding to the version of Apple system it administers, and the logo colour (and, to some extent, the style) is different for each new version.
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