Over the past month, former Twitter CEO Elon Musk has been pushing for an extreme rebrand of the company. Now serving as the CTO of the renamed X, Musk has been vocal about his involvement in the bizarre shift.
Musk is infamous for his obsession with the letter X, founding the companies SpaceX, xAI and X.com. The aforementioned X.com domain is now being used to host the social media platform but was originally a banking website he founded that eventually became PayPal in 2000. It’s hard to understand Musk’s obsession with the letter, as it’s costing him some serious brand power. As opposed to a unique name like Twitter, X is inherently more generic because it is just a letter. It’s ridiculous; in one measly character, I could either be referring to a letter or a prominent social media platform.
It’s hard to comprehend the benefits of this decision. Musk is ditching one of the most iconic logos in the world, opting for a much more minimalistic approach. By minimalistic, I mean the new logo is just a Unicode character from a Monotype font. Not only that, but Musk’s new proposed tagline for the platform is an absolute mess. Posted from his own account, Musk debuted “Blaze your glory!” as the new tagline.
What does that mean, and how does it relate to the app? The previous tagline, “It’s what’s happening,” had a much stronger connection to the platform. The new tagline is such a messy, vague reference to a network of hundreds of millions of users.
As one of the biggest social media platforms in the world, X used to have its own recognizable logo and lingo. Terms including tweeting and quoting became part of the world’s lexicon. In fact, in reference to Twitter, tweet is a defined verb in the Merriam-Webster dictionary. The rebrand has tossed out all of these words, replacing them with significantly less unique terminology. Retweets are now reposts, tweets are now posts, and so forth.
With a more generic logo, name and set of lingo, what exactly did X gain from this change? From what I can tell, absolutely nothing.
This is one of the most bizarre and idiotic marketing changes I’ve ever seen. Musk needs to realize he should sometimes set aside his personal preferences to maintain what actually succeeds on a global scale.
X is the latest addition to Musk’s consistent streak of publicity stunts. A few years ago, he made a tunneling company known as The Boring Company. Through this branding, Musk casually sold flamethrowers to a massive following. Like an unappreciated toddler, it seems like Musk has continued to seek the limelight. His purchase and rebranding of Twitter has generated tons of buzz because of his consistently controversial decisions. The deal came with no financial benefits for Musk since he’s still striving to break even. Even now, Musk is attempting to hype up a fight that he and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg could theoretically have.
As one of the richest men in the world, I think Musk just wants to be the hot topic of the room, even if the room is ridiculing his idiocy. As the saying goes, “Bad publicity is good publicity.”
