Elon Musty changing Twitter branding and logo to "X"

[The Mikado]

Nobody on this forum is using X less than before the Musk purchase. The app has gotten better at delivering content users want to see, making it more engaging than ever.

Imagine actually believing this

What a compelling argument

Algorithm-based feeds work. If you think I’m wrong, you’ll have to explain why X, Instagram and TikTok get more popular every year.  Ask product designers at YouTube if they think maximizing engagement isn’t essential to their business model built on advertising.

https://twitter.com/xdata/status/1702030150236307886?s=46&t=J_equ31A3oC9D3XQ...

Powerful brands like the NFL understand the value of X.

Twitter traffic is down 13% year on year between September 2022 and September 2023, though? That's not growing popularity.

Granted -13% year on year isn't the apocalyptic stuff some were predicting last year, but it's not...good...either.

[DaleCooper]

People who call the website "X" instead of Twitter are 1500% more likely to have ED.

[The Mikado]

[emailking]

How a single year of Elon Musk turned Twitter into a husk of its former self

It’s been one year to the day since Elon Musk completed his purchase of Twitter for $44 billion and set the company, along with its employees and users, off on a whiplash-inducing series of twists and turns.

Twelve months on, the company barely resembles its former self — and not only because Musk renamed it “X” and did away with its iconic blue bird branding. Through a dizzying and haphazard barrage of changes, Musk has transformed a profitable company once regarded as the world’s go-to source for breaking news and political commentary into a widely ridiculed platform that’s fighting just to break even and crippled by debt; that’s struggling to manage spam and disinformation; that’s alienated some of its biggest advertisers and users; and that’s casting about for purpose.

Even as Musk — and new CEO Linda Yaccarino — push their vision for X as an “everything app,” the company has seemingly no clear path back to prominence or respectability, or to recouping Musk’s massive investment.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/27/tech/elon-musk-twitter-x-one-year-changes/index.html

[quesaisje]

Looks like Musk did some damage, but the real death knell came with the demise of Yevgeniy Prigozhin.

[The Mikado]

Looks like Musk did some damage, but the real death knell came with the demise of Yevgeniy Prigozhin.

The dip lines up almost perfectly with "changing the name of the app from Twitter to X," which clearly led some people to uninstall it because unfamiliar app probably some bloatware what the hell's X.

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

Looks like Musk did some damage, but the real death knell came with the demise of Yevgeniy Prigozhin.

The dip lines up almost perfectly with "changing the name of the app from Twitter to X," which clearly led some people to uninstall it because unfamiliar app probably some bloatware what the hell's X.

Yeah, the X thing is the most brain-dead thing he did.

[Crumpets]

Remember, he bought it at $44 billion.

https://twitter.com/kyliebytes/status/1719050854224007517

[Torrain]

https://twitter.com/RishiSunak/status/1719055211451306003
This is feels like it's going to be embarrasing - and not necessarily for Musk.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

Elon Musk Says George Soros, Who Just Dumped His Tesla Stock, ‘Hates Humanity’

George Soros, the billionaire philanthropist often the target of antisemitic conspiracy theories, recently sold all of his Tesla stock after having pumped tens of millions of dollars into Elon Musk‘s electric vehicle company. Musk lobbed a characteristically lame attack at Soros Monday night. “Soros reminds me of Magneto,” he wrote, referring to the Marvel supervillain.

Musk wasn’t done. After it was pointed out that both Soros and Magneto survived the Holocaust and that Soros “gets attacked non-stop for his good intentions,” Musk objected: “You assume they are good intentions. They are not. He wants to erode the very fabric of civilization. Soros hates humanity.”

[Yoda]

Nobody on this forum is using X less than before the Musk purchase. The app has gotten better at delivering content users want to see, making it more engaging than ever.

False on all counts. I don't use Twitter at all anymore (uninstalled it) precisely b/c of the fact that it has gotten so atrociously bad at delivering the kind of content I follow and instead trying to force alt-right fascist content and Joe Rogan/Jordan Peterson/Charlie Kirk content down everyone's throat. It used to be a pace where you could have good discussions in the comments but the smart content is intentionally suppressed in favor of musk dick riders and the top comments are all now blue check mark losers who are dumb enough to pay for "free" speech.

[emailking]

I'm using it less simply because a lot of the people I follow have been gradually using it less the last few months or stopped altogether. I only use it to browse, not post.

[💥💥 brandon bro (he/him/his)]

I use it more but only due to personal circumstance. In an alternate universe in which these changes do not occur (but in all other ways beyond first-order effects, my life remains the same), it is possible I would behave exactly the same way. With that said, I really do not like this "Musk" fellow.

[quesaisje]

"Like Pravda" - Elon Musk claims that Twitter was "an arm of the government [..] controlled by the far left":

Jack [Dorsey] didn't really know this, but the degree to which Twitter was an arm of the government is not well understood by the public. And it was whatever the official government -- it was like Pravda, basically, a state publication is the way to think of old Twitter, a state publication. [...] There was basically oppression of any views that would even be considered middle of the road, but certainly anything on the right. I'm not talking like far-right, I'm just talking mildly right. Republicans were suppressed at ten times the rate of Democrats. That's because old Twitter was fundamentally controlled by the far left.

Axios: Fidelity further marks down the value of its shares in X, reducing its book value to 65% below its original $300 million investment.

NYT: X says its value is now $19B, down from last year's $44B price tag.

Forbes: X is now pitching unused account names to potential buyers, at a rate of $50,000.

Ars Technica: Musk's legal team accuses SEC of "McCarthyism" in effort to avoid testimony: "The filing comes about a month after the SEC sued Musk to force him to testify. Musk provided testimony twice in July 2022 but is resisting the SEC's attempt to question him a third time."

"A little humor": Musk touts early subscriber access to "based" AI assistant that has real-time access to X posts.

Full transcript of Twitter "all hands" meeting on 2026-10-23. Interesting throughout, some highlights:

• Yaccarino: Speed is at our core. The hustle and pace is enviable, and what we’re building here is completely reshaping what our users and our clients expect of a platform. We have to take a moment and think about what we’ve done in just a year. The advancements we’ve made in video, growing our communities, our creator program, X Hiring.
• Musk: We’re rapidly transforming the company from what it was, Twitter 1.0, to the everything app. [An] all-inclusive feature set that you can basically do anything you want on our system [...]. You can do payments, messages, video, calling, whatever you’d like, from one single, convenient place.
• Musk's list of accomplishments from X's team over the past year: (1) Audio and video calling (described as still in beta), (2) improved video streaming ("video is the highest bandwidth means of communication"), (3) ad revenue sharing for "creators", (4) Communities (?), (5) Community Notes
• Musk wants to compete with LinkedIn

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

Imagine actually believing that posting your resume on twitter will make potential employers more likely to hire you

[DaleCooper]

Attempts to make platforms or products an "everything" service tend to fail. Microsoft did years worth of damage to their brand when they tried to pitch the Xbox One as basically a DVR cable box rather than a game console. No one wants to manage their bank accounts on their social media platform. In fact, most people don't even want to mix family social media with public social media posting, let alone private communication. Who wants to video call their family over Twitter? Or use Twitter to replace text messages? It's a joke, and he's so out of touch.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

A friend pointed out to me a strong tell that Twitter (or the X-birdsite, or whatever it's being called now) really is dead, even if it hasn't stopped moving yet:

Are you concerned that someone will impersonate you on Twitter?

Do you think you will be mislead by someone credibly pretending to be an authority figure on Twitter?

The answer for me is, of course, "No" because I don't take anything on Twitter seriously anymore, insofar as I see it at all. Does anyone truly take Twitter seriously anymore? (I know there are people who will say, "yes, of course" but I strongly suspect they're mostly lying.) Musk talks a lot, but he's pretty much just running a polished-looking version of 8kun (formerly 8chan) with ads.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

PS5 To End Support For Twitter

Sony has announced that support on the PlayStation 5 (PS5) for Twitter — or X, if you want to call it that — is officially ending.

The announcement was made via notifications sent to consoles.

Ending the support means that players will no longer be able to view content posted on the platform or even publish to the platform moving forward. The company joins Microsoft in ending the console integration since Elon Musk took it over.

[emailking]

The Twitter login actually let you access the PS5's hidden web browser lol, a major regression from PS3/4.

[The Mikado]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/11/17/elon-musk-x-companies-pulling-ads-anti-semitism/

IBM, Apple, Disney, Paramount, Lionsgate, Sony, and Comcast suspending advertising on X. But I'm sure heatcharger will be along to tell us that this isn't actually a problem for their business and X is doing great even without its single largest advertiser Apple.

[Mr. Smith]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/11/17/elon-musk-x-companies-pulling-ads-anti-semitism/

IBM, Apple, Disney, Paramount, Lionsgate, Sony, and Comcast suspending advertising on X. But I'm sure heatcharger will be along to tell us that this isn't actually a problem for their business anf X is doing great even without its single largest advertiser Apple.

imagine if they all moved to Truth instead.

[The Mikado]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/11/17/elon-musk-x-companies-pulling-ads-anti-semitism/

IBM, Apple, Disney, Paramount, Lionsgate, Sony, and Comcast suspending advertising on X. But I'm sure heatcharger will be along to tell us that this isn't actually a problem for their business and X is doing great even without its single largest advertiser Apple.

Newest company not advertising on X: NBCUniversal. Remember that X is headed by ex-NBCUniversal exec Linda Yaccarino, who can't talk her old company into advertising on the new one.

[quesaisje]

The ad suspensions come after a few quiet weeks for X-formerly-known-as-Twitter. Even search interest has been down. These are the only items on the notepad:

• X's engineering team shared a list of accomplishments in celebration of a "year of engineering excellence."
• X's job board went live (although, like everything else, it continues to use a Twitter url, twitter.com/jobs)
• WP: How India tamed Twitter and set a global standard for online censorship - This article is less interesting for what it says about X/Twitter specifically than for the perspective it offers on the evolving relationship between Silicon Valley and governments around the world that are exercising increased control over online speech. This is true not just in countries like Turkey and India, but also in places like Canada and the EU. Either these platforms accept serving as instruments of surveillance and censorship for the local authorities, or they lose access to the market.
• A new version of the For You algorithm is coming, which supposedly gives greater circulation to smaller accounts and less consideration to which accounts a user follows. Not seeing much substantive coverage of this other than the announcement itself.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

https://www.mediamatters.org/elon-musk/its-antisemitism-stupid

X has rolled out a series of pathetic excuses for why ads for brand-conscious blue chip companies keep appearing alongside antisemitic content on the social media platform once known as Twitter. But they all ignore the obvious and central issue: Its owner, Elon Musk, is a right-wing extremist who has made X a hub for white supremacists and neo-Nazis.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

Elon Musk Calls Advertisers ‘Oppressors’ of ‘Free Speech’ After Exodus Following Antisemitic Tweets

Just hours after losing major advertisers on X thanks to his expressing support for antisemitic statements, Elon Musk slammed the departing companies as “the greatest oppressors,” of free speech while hawking the social media’s paid subscription service.

Major advertisers on X announced the suspension of marketing on the social media platform on Friday, coming after Musk faced backlash for agreeing with a post on X that glorified a deeply rooted antisemitic conspiracy theory, calling the bigoted statement “actual truth.” The advertisers pausing ads on the platform included Disney, Warner Bros., Paramount, Sony, Lionsgate, Apple, and IBM.

On Friday night, however, Musk could be seen on X encouraging users to sign up for the platform’s paid subscription service, which would prevent ads from showing up in the timeline.

This does clear one thing up: when Mr. Musk says "free speech", what he means is "I want worship and money".