Is re-branding Twitter all X?

Slightly over a year has passed since Elon Musk acquired Twitter. The journey of acquisition which started early in 2022, was full of turmoil and drama. It's reasonable to say that post-acquisition the company's journey has barely changed course.

Despite the company being mired in controversies relating to job cuts, drop in user base, the threat from presence of Threads and BlueSky, TikTok announcing text-only posts, political commentary, growing discomfort amongst the advertisers, and the associated financial challenges, Elon found it fit to re-brand it to 'X'. This confused the users, business community, marketers and brand strategists alike…

Elon's X-cessive obsession!

Elon's obsession with the letter 'X' has persisted for long time. Some might say it is a bit 'X-cessive'. Here's a quick history of Elon Musk's fixation with the letter 'X':

• Starting from his first successful venture, PayPal, Elon wanted to rename it as X.com

• You can find X in the name of his space company, SpaceX

• Tesla has an electric SUV called Model X

• He recently launched an AI app called xAI

• and the name of one of his children starts with X. I must admit, I find myself incapable of pronouncing the name properly.

What prominent media and brand experts have to say about re-branding Twitter?

In his usual style, Elon tweeted, sorry, posted, “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.”

As expected, the 'tweeps' were quick to respond. MKBHD, tweeted, sorry, posted, "I'm still gonna call it Twitter", to which Musk responded, "Not for long". Gradually, the mainstream media followed suit, primarily criticizing the move.

Here's a few examples of what the media and branding experts had to say:

Tech Reporter Casey Newton described Musk’s approach as owner of Twitter as “an extended act of cultural vandalism”.

Orlando Baeza, a former marketing executive and branding leader at Buzzfeed, Paramount, Activision, Adidas and Nike, said “I think there was a true affinity for Twitter and the brand by their power users." “This is a dramatic and unexpected turn. Their brand identity went from feeling warm and welcoming to dark and members-only. And to top it off, this all happened overnight. Literally.”

In a recent interview, Sean Thomas, Executive Creative Director at a global agency shared his view. “I know everyone’s going to say it, but it does deserve an absolute dunking-on, if I’m honest. I love Twitter, and I used it for years…When you’re on the homepage, the logo is black and white, but all the UX and UI is blue. People still say ‘I’m tweeting things’ rather than ‘I’m X’ing things.’…I just think it’s a shame. You’ve thrown away loads of distinctive assets. You’ve thrown away a platform that was really good. You go on there now, and it’s just disinformation. It’s fake news.”

An interesting data-driven angle to the story

In their own way, all these perspectives are valid in similar and different ways. I found an interesting blog from the feedback analytics platform, thematic.

The platform analyzed real reviews from Twitter users on the iOS App Store and Google Play store from 23rd of July when Elon Musk announced the change to 10th of August 2023. The sample size included a massive 44,000 reviews in an under a fortnight!

The blog provides specific data points generated by thematic across themes and sub-themes representing user sentiment across all the reviews analyzed. The overall feedback was mixed, with some users complaining of bugs, glitches, and slow loading times following the rebrand.

Other users appreciated the platform's freedom of speech and news and videos features. There were complaints regarding the new name, logo, and the presence of racist and sexist accounts.

The sub-theme analysis specifically focused on the rebrand indicated that the majority of users had negative sentiment. Many felt the rebrand was unnecessary and stripped Twitter of its personality. Some suggested it was more of an Elon Musk ego-trip than a helpful move for users. Some users were disappointed about losing useful features and criticized new monetization rules as money-grabbing.

Only 58 of the comments were positive about the rebrand. In their view, the change to "X" was a good move for an "everything app.”

A month later, another round of analysis was done using the platform. This time, there was a decrease in the number of reviews. There had been fewer people who had provided feedback about how they felt about X, and the rebrand, and the responses were slightly more favorable. With more reviews discussing moderation, privacy, and security, attention had shifted towards the app's functionality. It appeared that the rebrand, despite controversy, had settled into a new normal with fewer users providing feedback.

Compared to an estimated 500 million tweets per day, the sample size is too small, but this interesting data-backed analysis of the rebrand brought forth two interesting findings:

1. Rebranding brought a strong negative sentiment amongst the users. But it also surfaced a constructive feedback about the platform like presence of malicious accounts, loss of useful features, and the platform's monetization policies.

2. Public memory is short. A month later, people continued to criticize the platform for its functionalities, safety etc. but not so much the rebranding itself. Does this mean that people eventually get used to changes? Or does the decline in negative reviews indicated decline in users? Or worse, suppression of speech perhaps?

Searching the 'why' of the re-brand in Twitter CEO's posts

Rebranding of the platform left too many unanswered questions. So, I looked at what the CEO of Twitter, not X, had to say after the announcement. Twitter CEO, Linda Yaccarino, tweeted, sorry again, posted, the reasons behind the rebrand. Broadly, the reasons or potential 'why' of this rebranding mentioned in the posts could be categorised into 3 buckets:

1. The rebranding represented changes in the platform itself - Originally, Twitter stood for being a Web-based realtime status/short message communication service. Which it delivered effectively and consistently. Relaying Musk's vision in the filing to SEC last year, Linda also stated that the platform will become a global town square with no clarity on what it actually means and how it is accurately represented by an X.

2. Enhancements in platform features and functionalities - In a series of posts, Ms. Yaccarino talked about a host of platform improvements which appeared contrary to reality. She talked about:

   1. Unlimited interactivity while Elon Musk decided to prioritize paid users in his replies. Then, limits were imposed on viewing tweets (sorry, posts) and sending DMs actually limited interactivity.

   2. Availability of multi-modal content like:

      1. audio which was introduced as Twitter Spaces before Elon took over;

      2. video which has been supported by the platform for a long time except for allowing upload of longer videos which is available for paid users only; and

      3. messaging, which is the core purpose of the platform, has been limited and de-prioritised for free users in Elon's replies.

   3. Introduction of payments like Payments on WhatsApp is yet to be implemented on the platform. I had read somewhere that the company has registered with US Treasury Department to start processing payments. But that's all that is known about it.

   4. Enabling e-commerce features on the platform like Facebook Marketplace. It is a necessary feature for a social media platform to have as it brings exceptional value to businesses, marketers, and end users. But, at a New York Times event recently, Elon told the advertisers to get lost in so many words. This does not necessarily make the platform attractive for e-commerce if the rapport with the advertisers is impacted.

   5. Bringing AI to the platform is another improvement that the CEO of X talked about. Recently, Grok Chatbot was announced but its lack of availability to free users makes the implementation of AI-powered features counter-intuitive.

3. Unlimited transformation of the platform is the third reason mentioned in one of the tweets. My apologies, posts. It is not known to many what transformations are being referred to. Moreover, the company's financial state does not look good with news about rent for some offices not being paid, and lawsuits by vendors for non-payment of dues. One would wonder how unlimited transformation would happen with dwindling finances.

Does the re-branding to X satsify key principles of rebranding?

The decision to rebrand needs to be done carefully and thoughtfully based on a deep understanding of the target audience and the market. Looking at some of the widely accepted principles, re-branding Twitter to X does not satisfactorily check the boxes.

One of the foremost principles of rebranding is that it should increase the chance of performance rather than amplifying the status quo. In case of X, the opinion of mainstream media & brand experts, and the indicative user sentiment does not convey that. Instead of increasing its user base, the platform seems to have lost a percentage of its monthly active users.

Typically, brands carry out a comprehensive brand audit to understand the current state of the brand and identify the whitespaces that rebranding could help them to own. It is hard to say that such a diligence was done in this case. It appears to be a more of an instinctive move than being research and data driven.

Then, understanding the needs and perceptions of the target audience becomes important to determine what could inspire and excite them with rebranding. The criticism shared by the users after the rebranding to X around safety, sexist and racist accounts, limiting features etc. indicate that little or no consideration was given what the platform's users want.

While moving away from an existing brand, business must factor in the emotional connection the target audience may have with the existing brand. Companies rebrand to innovate and adapt. But the target audience may not be necessarily exciting as they may find the change in brand a bit jarring.

This could not be more true for a brand like Twitter that had seeped into the cultural context and lexicon. "Tweeted" had become the act of becoming part of the online chatter on the platform. And the people who participated were fondly referred to as "tweeps". The brand cachet Twitter had is all wiped clean for a letter that doesn't mean anything to the users. If all this dissonance was not enough, in same New York Times event, Elon remarked, "It's not a tweet. It's a post." For ardent platform users, it can be truly jarring and a bit harsh.

Additonally, businesses prefer to test out the rebrand elements with the target audience to make sure that any crucial aspect is not ignored. This did not happen in case of Twitter. A single tweet, sorry, post, with a minimalist art deco style logo was shared. May be it was tested before. But many people found it sudden and unsettling. This is not new for Elon Musk. He nearly divided the Twitter users into half with the release of the design of Cybertruck in 2019. He seems to have a polarising effect on people when it comes to design. He made the SpaceX Starship rocket pointier based on a scene from the movie 'Dictator'.

What all this means for businesses and marketers?

There is a common understanding amongst brand managers that a brand is not a mere name or logo. It is a promise of the experience the product or service it represents can deliver to the end users or customers. But the shift from Twitter to X does not adequately convey the intent to fulfill the promises that are being made.

Changes are announced suddenly and new features are introduced but only for paid subscribers. Then, Elon Musk makes remarks that make advertisers uncomfortable. In the midst of all this chaos, there are a few questions that marketers still grapple with:

1. How does the company intend to retain and expand its dwindling user base?

2. If all the new features are available only for paid subscribers, what is the ROI of having a paid business account? What about the small and medium businesses who have limited marketing budgets?

3. For small and medium businesses having a reasonable presence on the platform, or looking to build presence on the platform, if posting long form posts and videos means additional monthly spend, why should they not consider competing platforms that offer such features for free?

4. If the users are unhappy with the current features and functionalities on the platform, and advertisers are being shooed away, how will the platform become attractive for e-commerce businesses?

5. With so many limiting features and preference towards paid users, why should they consider Twitter or X in their channel mix in 2024 and beyond?

Twitter or X is not going anywhere. And its value in the social media landscape cannot be disputed. For sure. But, all these controversies surrounding the platform; sudden and erratic changes in platform functionality; preferential treatment towards paid accounts; and limited access to new features give cold feet to the marketers. Because they are the ones who seek dollars for developing content for the platform and ad spend; and show the ROI for every dollar spent. They need clarity on why they should continue to consider the platform in their channel mix and not move to competing platforms.

It has been nearly 5 months since the rebranding. Still, people use the word "tweets" because "x-ed" doesn't mean anything. I had to apologize 5 times for saying "tweets" instead of "posts". As of publishing of this episode, the subject of the e-mail notification received from the platform still reads "X (formerly Twitter)". If people still have to be reminded of what the brand is, and businesses and marketers are confused, probably the rebranding was not particularly right, if not wrong, or the symbol X.