Twitter Is Now X
Company-wide memo from nominal X Corp CEO Linda Yaccarino, sent this morning[…]
Sarah Perez (via John Gruber):
The owner of the @x Twitter handle confirmed that the company, now known as X, took over his account without warning or financial compensation, telling him the handle is property of X. The handle had previously belonged to Gene X Hwang of the corporate photography and videography studio Orange Photography. In a letter, the company formerly known as Twitter thanked Hwang for his loyalty and offered him a selection of X merchandise and a tour of X’s HQ, as a “reflection of our appreciation.”
X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, has updated its official app on Apple’s App Store to conform with the new branding that was announced last weekend by billionaire owner Elon Musk.
Instead of “Let’s talk” – Twitter’s original tagline – “Blaze your glory!” is the curious subtitle on X’s iOS App Store listing, which describes the app as “the trusted digital town square for everyone.”
The new logo and name are meant to reflect Musk’s longstanding intention to transform the social media network into an “everything app” similar to China’s WeChat.
Apple blinked.
X breaks App Store rule, becomes the very first single character listing.
Wonder when the Twitter URLs will switch over to X dot com. 🤔
“We treat all developers the same.”
I'm fine with that not being true, and there are good reasons for it not being true, but I wish Apple would stop saying it.
Falls into the Google-not-being-evil category.
See also: Netflix.
Esther Crawford (tweet, via Jay Peters):
[Elon Musk’s] focus on speed is incredible and he’s obviously not afraid of blowing things up, but now the real measure will be how it get reconstructed and if enough people want the new everything app he is building.
I learned a ton from watching Elon up close — the good, the bad and the ugly. His boldness, passion and storytelling is inspiring, but his lack of process and empathy is painful.
Elon has an exceptional talent for tackling hard physics-based problems but products that facilitate human connection and communication require a different type of social-emotional intelligence.
Social networks are hard to kill but they’re not immune from death spirals. Only time will tell what the outcome will be but I hope X finds its footing because competition is good for consumers.
Update (2023-08-04): Mysk:
The bundle ID of X for iOS is still com.atebits.Tweetie2.
Update (2023-08-09): Dave Mark:
The Mac Twitter client has no mention of X (see pic).
- Still called Twitter
- The copyright is 2022, Twitter Inc.
Given all the things drawing focus for the Twitter rebrand, think Musk will ever reskin Twitter for Mac? Or will it eventually just die, as tweets make their way to x dot com and the old client can no longer find them? 🤔
Update (2023-08-22): John Gruber (Hacker News):
So if you don’t know that Twitter changed its name to X, and search for “Twitter”, the top result is a paid ad from a competitor (Snapchat, Facebook, Instagram, etc.), and the result for X doesn’t look anything like Twitter. It doesn’t have the name, doesn’t say “formerly Twitter”, and isn’t even blue. It’s just the ugly X icon and the insipid slogan “Blaze your glory!”
So it’s no surprise that downloads are dropping.
8 Comments RSS · Twitter · Mastodon
@Plume
> but it was also broken for a good reason
I'm really curious to read what this good reason is because when Apple' reviewing process blocks the publishing of an application for dumb reasons that are not listed in the guidelines, there are usually no ways to make them understand anything.
The name of the company/service is literally a single letter. Not sure why Apple would block them from using it.
@Chris: "The name of the company/service is literally a single letter. Not sure why Apple would block them from using it."
In an alternate universe, this would be a good reason.
>> but it was also broken for a good reason
>I'm really curious to read what this good reason is
It's a globally known company whose company name and product name are both "X," and who owns the domain name X.com. Why would you *not* make an exception for them and allow them to have that name as their listed name? Who would it benefit to prevent them from using their name in that way?
@Plume
In theory, yes. In practice, I don't think it would be reasonable to hold our breath until we see additional entries for companies whose names are a single glyph/character and whose products are also the same single glyph/character. So what looked like a good reason does not anymore.
If there are other companies who also have a similarly obvious hold on a single character name, they should also get that same treatment. I can't think of any, because you have to be incredibly stupid to think that having a single-character company or product name is a good idea, and most people aren't that dumb.
I stand by my point.
> you have to be incredibly stupid to think that having a single-character company or product name is a good idea
I'm not 100% sure about this. This is more dependant on the search engines. But anyway, that's why I wrote glyph.
“the trusted digital town square for everyone.”
That's hilarious.
"X breaks App Store rule, becomes the very first single character listing."
The rule is there for a good reason, but it was also broken for a good reason. I feel like this particular instance isn't an example of Apple screwing up or giving in, it's an example of them just being pragmatic.