Imagine Elon Musk contemplating in his office.
He seems to be in a pensive mood, mentally skimming through some ideas. After a long night of endless calls, conversations, and discussions, he finally takes out his phone. He opens the ‘Twitter’ app and tweets – “Let’s do this.”
And the Succession theme song drops!
Table of contents
Episode 1: The Prelude
Source: Forbes
There is a reason why we’ve opened this piece to you through the exhilarating theme song of ‘Succession’. Scripted and directed by tech mogul Elon Musk, the current rebranding is nothing short of a drama series. And we bet you’d not want to ‘skip intro’ on this one!
With a rebranding announcement happening one day and a new logo glowing on the company’s headquarters the next. From a ‘fan-made’ design as the official logo to San Francisco police launching an investigation, everything feels straight out of a show.
The world’s most popular microblogging website is no longer called ‘Twitter’ and Larry the Bird is no longer its official logo. In place of the endearing and cheerful blue bird that sat in the top centre of our screens, stands a futuristic, somewhat secretive, X logo, proclaiming a new beginning.
Keeping track of the hottest tech story that is developing with every passing day can seem overwhelming. Let us give you a ‘bird’s eye’ view (pun intended) of everything that has happened, everything that is happening, and everything that may happen!
Episode 2: The X-factor – New Design and Musk’s Obsession
A lot has gone down at Twitter’s headquarters in the past two weeks. On July 23, the company’s owner, Elon Musk, announced the logo change through a series of ‘tweets’.
“And soon we shall bid adieu to the Twitter brand and, gradually, all the birds”, said the boss.
A new logo was unveiled shortly after that, and the announcement quickly rose to the top of the charts.
The logo selection was even more dramatic. The X owner first conducted a user poll, which voted heavily in favour of a theme change, and then invited interim logo suggestions from users themselves. “If a good enough X logo is posted tonight, we’ll make (it) go live worldwide tomorrow”, tweeted Musk. Soon enough, a user named Sawyer Merritt shared the new ‘X’ design that Musk found appealing because of its “minimalist art deco”.
The new ‘X’ logo shared by Elon Musk on his Twitter account.
While a few have regarded the move as bold, claiming it to be the “smartest branding move of the last 5 years”, several have thrashed the CEO for killing a well-established brand with an ‘uninspiring’ and ‘dull’ logo. The response, therefore, has been mixed.
Elon Musk (right) along with PayPal founder Peter Thiel (left). Image taken from the Twitter account of Walter Isaacson, the author of the book ‘Elon Musk’.
Musk’s adulation for the letter X is not a newly-found obsession. In the 90s, Musk ran an online bank called X.com. As the bank later merged with Paypal, Musk was subsequently ousted as its CEO.
Why?
Because he wanted to change the Paypal branding to ‘X’. The same X.com today redirects to Twitter. Post takeover last year, ‘Twitter Inc’. was also changed to ‘X Corp’.
And of course, there is the aerospace giant SpaceX. As if companies were not enough, the guy had also named his son X Æ A-12 Musk. Yeah, read that again!
| Other Popular Rebrands
Do you remember Google adopting the name ‘Alphabet’ for its parent company? Well, if that seems distant, you must remember Facebook announcing the name ‘Meta’ as the umbrella brand for all its apps and services.So, rebranding isn’t a new phenomenon. It’s just that, unlike Alphabet and Meta, X is not an umbrella company. While Google and Facebook are still the primary products of these companies, ‘X’ aims to completely delete the Twitter brand. |
Episode 3: Twitter 2.0 – The Everything App
As crazy as it may sound, there is actually a plan in place.
The current mayhem is orchestrated towards a very specific ‘vision’ of turning the platform into an ‘everything app’ where all services can be accessed. To start with, have a look at how the multi-billionaire entrepreneur defended his move.
“The Twitter name made sense when it was just 140-character messages going back and forth – like birds tweeting, but now you can post almost anything, including several hours of video. In the months to come, we will add comprehensive communications and the ability to conduct your entire financial life. The Twitter name does not make sense in that context, so we must bid adieu to the bird ”, explained Musk.
Musk has had a longstanding ambition to expand Twitter primarily into a financial gateway.
Twitter (oops) X owner, Elon Musk, has time and again emphasised his intentions of turning the platform into a sort of super app. His inspiration came from the popular Chinese app WeChat. Chinese people buy their daily vegetables, file for divorce, make appointments with their doctors, and plan their travels, all using WeChat. Well, for our film buffs, this is the tech world’s Everything Everywhere All At Once!
The company’s ambiguous but curious future can only be speculated by the words of CEO Linda Yaccarino, who wrote, “..our usage is at an all-time high, and we’ll continue to delight our entire community with new experiences in audio, video, messaging, payments, and banking..” Notice that there is a whole range. With a successful transition, X will be Twitter plus Paypal plus Youtube plus…well, everything!
Episode 4: Jargon or Overhaul?
Source: Newsbugz
Musk is no ordinary man. The guy has practically made us float on roads with Tesla electric cars. He’s made us believe we might be breathing on Mars at some point in the future. You may like him or not, but as they say, you definitely cannot ignore him. After all, the roots of his current plans date back to his Paypal days.
What bothers the experts is that America is not China. WeChat owes its success to very peculiar Chinese conditions. With no access to Google, Facebook, or Youtube in a censored China, WeChat had the leverage to be a one-stop solution. And again, while Twitter has just begun its transition, WeChat was already positioned as the super app almost a decade ago.
Today, in America and elsewhere, there is an Uber to book cabs, an Amazon to buy stuff online, an Apple Pay to transact digitally, and a Zomato to order food. With so much competition, is there really a space for a western WeChat?
If Musk is a product genius, he’s a master showman too. Experts’ concerns about the entire act resulting in a miss aren’t solely based on fantasy, either. After all, what started as a takeover in service of ‘free speech’ is today a completely different ball game altogether.
Episode 5: The Bird that Flew, Homage to the Original Logo
Image via Twitter user @andreas212nyc
“Twitter is the bird. The bird is Twitter”, quoted the then creative director Doug Bowman announcing the last redesign of the original bird logo in 2012. The iconic logo was not only among the company’s most valuable assets, but it was the brand’s gateway to the hearts of millions of ‘tweeters’.
Originally designed in 2006 by Simon Oxley, the logo evolved through the years before attaining its suave. Did you know that the logo was famously called Larry the Bird, after the famous American Basketball player? The upward-looking and ever-enchanting blue bird represented “freedom, hope, and limitless possibility.”
Through Larry the bird, we all chirped, we all cuckooed, and we all tweeted.
From our symphonies to our cacophonies, the bird made sure every expression of the human voice got heard. Well, it seems unlikely now that it will ever fly back to its nest. Nonetheless, our love, respect, and tributes.
Season Finale: Enter the Future: Concluding Remarks
17 years ago, Twitter changed the way people and brands communicated with one another. What’s the future of the company now? Nostalgic hints of a blue and white themed interface and buttons are still present in the app. With the domain ‘twitter.com’ currently active, do we still call our posts ‘tweets’? And what will ‘re-tweets’ be referred to as? Or, as a user promptly asked, Are we all ‘X-men’ now? Frankly, only time or Elon Musk can answer these questions.
What’s clear is that the Twitter X-perience is going to change radically. A lot has happened, and a lot more is yet to happen. For all we know, we may start seeing films with the label “A Twitter Original” by the end of this decade!
And as crazy as it may sound, we might find ourselves exchanging money on Twitter, the bank! And shopping on Twitter? Well, X-cuse me!
