Elon Musk's Twitter Rebranding to X: A Bold Move or A Misstep?
Elon Musk, known for his bold and audacious moves lately decided to rebrand Twitter to X as a backlash on Mark Zuckerberg's Threads launch. He announced this in a single tweet on July 23 saying: "soon we shall bid adieu to the Twitter brand and, gradually, all the birds," followed by a second tweet adding that "if a good enough X logo is posted tonight, we'll make go live worldwide tomorrow." This is what happened so he launched the new brand to make it the "Everything App" or a "Super App" with features and social media updates such as payments, banking, and more for unlimited interaction, and eventually more ROI. This move comes as no surprise to those familiar with Musk's eccentric and forward-thinking nature. After all, he has always been for challenging the status quo and now he's trying to raise the competition level.
The decision to rebrand Twitter to X is not just a simple name change; it's a reflection of Musk's philosophy and his interest to make the platform modeled after WeChat which is owned by the Chinese technology giant Tencent. Of course, this rebranding has not been without its fair share of controversy and was followed by a backlash from Twitter users with hashtags such as #RIPTwitter and #Twitter trending daily, but Musk seemed unaffected or phased by these complaints.
Here, the question arises: When does a company change its brand?
The main reasons are Leadership change, reputation crisis management, services or market repositioning, or merging of 2 companies.
In this case, Musk knows what he's exactly doing with this new strategy, keeping in mind that his brand is stronger than his companies, and he is an idol figure to many entrepreneurs trying to take a new approach.
So, what's the future of X?
Nothing is clear yet, but all we know so far is Twitter isn't the same social network anymore with the changes taking place and the new advertisement policy happening. With Twitter being a place of free expression and thoughtful conversations that aim to make a change, will it become another app mixing other apps' features?
