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Twitter unveils X logo to replace blue bird
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- ggm 3y agoMusk.. the gift which keeps on giving. I wonder if anyone thinks this is a good idea. It's at least theoretically possible but seems very unlikely.
- jmeister 3y agoHave you considered looking away?
- kayodelycaon 3y agoIt’s really hard to not look at a train wreck in progress. Especially when it comes with a large drink of schadenfreude and a bucket of virtual popcorn. I’m sad for what the destruction of Twitter and the people it affects, but at least the fireworks are cool.
- jmeister 3y ago>fireworks Usually this is too vacuous of a criterion for comments on any other topic on HN. For some reason any post on Twitter has pages and pages of “yikes” “derp”, people gossiping about “Elon” like he’s their wayward cousin. Pathetic.
- ggm 3y agoSo, what's your take? Give us the vibe, the feel of it. What's the upside plan here?
- jmeister 3y agoThis is too insignificant for a “take”. It doesn’t change anything substantial for me or most existing Twitter users.
- bandyaboot 3y ago> Have you considered looking away?
- rsynnott 3y ago> people taking about “Elon” like he’s their wayward cousin What is the proper form of address for naughty ol' Mr Car?
- ryandvm 3y agoHe is our wayward cousin. Elon is a cautionary tale about what can happen when a slightly clever, asocial, ADHD, internet troll finds himself with more money than God. He is the archetypal HN user gone off the deep end. This is like a visit from the Ghost of Christmas Future for most of us.
- berkes 3y agoI'm afraid I see many similarities with that older wayward cousin, John McAfee. I truly hope Musk finds help, or finds that his coffers are harder to deplete than Johns, but it's not looking good. "we", the hacker-crowd, indeed have some lessons to learn here.
- oneeyedpigeon 3y agoHave you considered that some people may be unable to do so without losing their job?
- jmeister 3y agoExample? Who are these people forced to use Twitter?
- oneeyedpigeon 3y agoAnyone in any kind of social media role, pretty much. And, although not literally forced, many others cannot ignore the advantage the platform brings: writers, gamedevs, journalists, etc.
- ggm 3y agoI've only known one person brave enough to stand up to a toxic ceo in an "all hands" in 40 years of working. It's surprisingly hard to do. Nobody is really trapped but it can be very hard to just walk. I didn't. I wish I had.
- rsynnott 3y agoWhy on earth would I look away from such an absurd spectacle?
- lapcat 3y agoYet another sign that Yaccarino is a sham CEO. We already knew Musk was like this, but it's surprising that Yaccarino signed up for it. I hope she negotiated a massive cash signing bonus, because she's totally trashed her career.
- drcongo 3y agoSurely just taking that not-a-real-job did that?
- danpalmer 3y agoWe can hope for her sake, but I think it's much more likely that given her background in sales, she's just uninformed about building consumer products and services, and all in on that sales culture of promising everything and ignoring the execution.
- juujian 3y agoI know I would volunteer you be a sock puppet for the kind of money that she will be paid. For significantly less actually.
- gizmo 3y agoWhy would this tarnish her career? Everybody understands Musk is still the chief twit.
- tyingq 3y ago>He also owns the X.com domain name, which now redirects to Twitter. I get a GoDaddy parked domain page. Edit: maybe some people aren't getting the parked page? It wasn't an attempt at a joke, that's what I see. Seems relevant given he's clearly pushing the idea. https://imgur.com/a/pi5B11K https://imgur.com/a/pi5B11K $ whois x.com | grep '^Registrar URL' Registrar URL: https://www.godaddy.com
- brycewray 3y agoTo quote John Wayne’s character from “The Shootist”: “That’s appropriate.”
- mkl 3y agoI get that whois, but the redirect.
- tyingq 3y agoThe parked page happens to not be a redirect. It's probably DNS TTLs. If you get redirected to twitter, you're seeing A records like 104.18.16.213 (Cloudflare). I'm seeing an A record of 34.102.136.180, which gives the parked page. I think they changed the NS records to Cloudflare and the TTL hasn't run out on the original for many downstream DNS servers.... $ host -t ns x.com x.com name server ns71.domaincontrol.com. x.com name server ns72.domaincontrol.com. "domaincontrol.com" is the parked page service.
- duped 3y agoIsn't that the Xorg logo?
- mgrandl 3y agoIt's literally xorg and that logo looked old when it was released almost 40 years ago. This is honestly hilarious.
- jmeister 3y agoHave you considered looking away?
- tromp 3y agoNot literally but pretty close: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X_Window_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X_Window_System
- zetalyrae 3y agoThe X11 logo looks a lot more stylish than the Elon X.
- inglor_cz 3y agoI actually like it, but I am generally fond of older, pre-smartphone UI design, so I might be an exception.
- Geee 3y agoXorg logo is completely different. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/90/X.Org_Logo.svg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/90/X.Org_Lo...
- g0xA52A2A 3y agoIt's actually "Mathematical Double-Struck Capital X" https://www.compart.com/en/unicode/U+1D54F https://www.compart.com/en/unicode/U+1D54F
- layer8 3y agoI wonder if that will have an effect on copyright for the logo. I mean, you can’t just copyright the shape of an existing Unicode character, at least for such a simple one.
- teeray 3y agoI just checked for you, it’s not April 1st.
- leononame 3y agoIs it just me or is X a stupid name? It's hard to google it and there are so many other associations with it (like X-Files, Mr X, etc - just so much). Twitter is a huge brand and they just kill it off like that? I'm not on the Musk hate train, but this feels like a stupid impulse decision to me
- Fnoord 3y agoIt isn't an impulse decision. Elon had X.com for ages. He had before they merged with Confinity to form PayPal, Inc. He wanted PayPal to be renamed to X.com back then, but PayPal had way better brand recognition, so (even though he was CEO) internal backlash talked him out of the idea. The former Dutch brand Xs4all (ISP) had a marketing campaign where they asked input from their customers. It evolved around the X. It taught me X stands for a lot of things. It's a letter, for one. It's a cross. A railroad crossing. It's a knot. It also stands for trans (in the broad sense of the word, including but not limited to transsexual). There's also an association with masculinity. That X stands for so much isn't coincidence. Musk wants you to think of his brand (X.com; not X) when you see the letter X, or even subliminal in the examples I gave above. My take is it could work out on the long term, but on the short term it further alienates Twitter's status quo. It could accelerate the domino effect.
- johnnyanmac 3y agoThat's a very large gamble for something that the twitter bird already accomplished. At least Meta kept the name Facebook as a brand and used a different sites entirely when it wanted to experiment with a new formet. But him having that idea for so long explains a lot. He is very clearly stuck in the 90's/00's "extreme/radical" days if he is that beholden to having the name "X" somewhere in his portfolio. way before you consider factors like search ability and SEO and general professional communication on the internet. But I'm not surprised he didn't keep up with the times.
- flagrant_taco 3y agoLike or dislike Elon, it seems like a stretch to say he didn't keep up with the times when he's the guy who started companies aiming to make satellite internet that doesn't suck, rockets used to replace NASA's old garbage, and popularize electric cars when every manufacturer had given up on them.
- Doctor_Fegg 3y agoa[href="/home"][aria-label="Twitter"] { display: none !important; } For Stylus, Cascadea or whatever CSS writing extension you have installed. I did this months ago because the stupid doge was annoying me and forget I'd left it on, but it still works.
- oneeyedpigeon 3y agoI did this too in response to the doge, but now i want the twitter logo. I very nearly copy+pasted the svg but I ended up hard-refreshing twitter and losing it :(
- bradrn 3y agoLooks like they haven’t changed the favicon yet… https://abs.twimg.com/favicons/twitter.2.ico https://abs.twimg.com/favicons/twitter.2.ico EDIT: And in fact, it looks like their 404 page has the SVG: e.g. https://abs.twimg.com/favicons/twitter.3.ico https://abs.twimg.com/favicons/twitter.3.ico
- philk10 3y agoand the Status page
- mattkevan 3y agoStupidest thing I’ve ever heard. Going to be studied by generations as a case study in wiping out decades of brand value overnight. Also, the logo was selected by a competition, which is absolutely the way to rebrand a multi-billion dollar company. Fascinating, in a car crash sort of way.
- lapcat 3y ago> Going to be studied by generations as a case study in wiping out decades of brand value overnight. What is there to study? It's just one childish rich dude with no adults in the room, case closed.
- kayodelycaon 3y agoI’ve taken a business course in college that covered things like this. There’s plenty to learn by dissecting the many, many levels of failure involved.
- omgomgomgomg 3y agoI would be most interested to read about that, can you provide a reference or links?
- kayodelycaon 3y agoSadly, no. It was over a decade ago. I don’t remember the cases nor do I have the books or paperwork. Fortunately, case studies are really easy to find online. Try searching for “case studies in brand management”.
- pwpw 3y agoIn college, I studied the failed merger between GM and Ross Perot’s Electronic Data Systems (EDS). Essentially a study on egos and cultural incompatibilities. https://www.nytimes.com/1989/03/26/magazine/gm-vs-ross-perot-breaking-up-is-hard-to-do.html https://www.nytimes.com/1989/03/26/magazine/gm-vs-ross-perot...
- mkl 3y agoThis reads like something on The Onion.
- rhabarba 3y agoBooooo!
- wunderland 3y agoA poorly chosen name that seems like a child’s idea of cool. Vaguely over-promising things which are unlikely to ever be built. Musk is nothing if not consistent.
- dougmwne 3y agoMy immediate reaction was towering stupidity. But on the other hand, what is there really to protect here? Twitter’s reputation is in the trash bin anyways. And the cutesy branding is going to end up out of step with the toxic conservative cesspool he is trying to create. So yeah, maybe a solid move? The dumpster is already on fire, so why not.
- neuronic 3y agoWhy does anyone even care about it? Musk is just showing off the world his $44bn toy.
- mcfedr 3y agoBecause like it or not (good idea or not) people have come to rely on it for important things, news and journalism particularly
- irusensei 3y agoNostr is the only bird in town now. Ah yes there is an elephant in the room.
- oneeyedpigeon 3y agoWith a 'logo' that's just a character ripped straight from a Monotype font: https://twitter.com/Fontendou/status/1683407528405901312 https://twitter.com/Fontendou/status/1683407528405901312
- christophilus 3y agoAmazing. Also, they haven't changed the favicon. I'd have thought you'd do that at the same time you change the logo.
- matthewfelgate 3y agoWhat's with the BBC's childish description of Elon Musk as "The billionaire"?
- drcongo 3y agoIt's kinda standard practice in low journalism in the UK to describe people in lots of pointless ways in a single article. Usually the first mention includes their age in brackets for some reason. The BBC should really be better than that though.
- oneeyedpigeon 3y agoIt's pretty common to use another noun in writing like this, to avoid saying "Elon Musk" all the time. Adds a bit of variety and is less jarring.
- Fnoord 3y agoWe could make one up? Like Muskuito, or simple Musk or Elon (less common). I mean there's the Ratner effect. Why not an Elon effect? The combination of Ratner effect and Osbourne effect is known as the Elop effect [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Elop#%22Burning_Platform%22_memo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Elop#%22Burning_Platfo...
- leshenka 3y agothe weirdest thing about x logo is that it barely has any "volume" of sorts. It's just three very thin lines (and two very tiny ones which I disregard) stylized as letter x. I use twitter every day but don't really care about this rebranding. I see arguments why it's bad and those are really valid arguments but personally it doesn't concern me at all
- drcongo 3y agoI'm getting strong Putin Z vibes.
- redog 3y agoN b4 North Korea Y
- awb 3y agoWhat does “X” have to do with Twitter? X.com was supposed to be his “everything app”. Maybe Twitter will redirect to X.com down the line?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- narrator 3y agoI write sci-fi so I like to wildly speculate, so here goes: I think the point of having X be the everything app is that as we experience extreme amounts of crime because of the neglect of the authorities, and transition to the privatized everything, no default trust future where you get nothing for just being a human who isn't in prison, when you get cancelled you'll really get cancelled. You'll not only get all your social media accounts cancelled, but your bank accounts, the lease on the place you live, your ability to go to grocery stores, your ability to purchase gas, your ability to get a loan, your ability to use public transit, your internet connection, your ability to use public bathrooms, your ability to use dating apps, etc. will all be cancelled. X will provide all of these, and X will not cancel you. This has precedent. China, during Zero Covid in 2022, would lock you out of absolutely everything if you didn't go stand in line half the day to get a Covid test every single day. I could imagine all the private providers of absolutely everything banding together to implement the same thing in a private system with the cheering of the populace since it's the only way to protect against criminals when you get a San Francisco style situation where the government gives up on enforcing most laws.
- markild 3y ago> X will not cancel you. From the amounts of bans since Twitter was acquired, I think you'd have some work cut out for you assuring people of that.
- flagrant_taco 3y agoI rarely use Twitter, had the amount of band really increased compared to the list 3 years? I don't know if that data is actually public anywhere, but I'd be really shocked/appalled if they're banning more today then when Twitter (and others) where regularly working with the federal government to control what could be discussed related to CoV-2 and the pandemic response.
- oneeyedpigeon 3y agoThe OP's point really only holds if there have been no bans. (I'm not sure how the ban quantities pre- and post-takeover relate)
- mrtksn 3y agoSocial networks have a moat so strong that can you stand all kind of abuse apparently. Reminds me of 2balkan4you reddit community which has a humour style too crude for the Western cultures and gets banned all the time but because the Balkan people banter with each other in that way and banning a community does nothing more than re-grouping under a new name. It's actually the same thing with all kind of networks of people and as long as the reasons to come together exists, people will go in great lengths to come together. Maybe it's in the similar vein of "you can't kill an idea", so as long as the communication tech can capture the core needs of people who would like to network no downtime or logo change will break your product because you will have very motivated users. The worth of the product from monetary perspective can change though.
- fallingknife 3y agoTo everybody here saying this will kill Twitter: it won't. - firing 75% of the employees didn't kill Twitter - aggressive rate limits and requiring auth didn't kill Twitter - a well funded competitor with 100 million signups in days didn't kill Twitter (and their engagement is down 70% in just 2 weeks) And yet here we are on HN again prophesying doom because of a name change. A name change won't kill Twitter either. Their traffic is driven by network effect, not branding. The past year has been a case study in it.
- soderfoo 3y ago[flagged]
- fallingknife 3y ago[flagged]
- irusensei 3y ago> reddit-esque A certain internet board has been referencing this site as "the orange reddit".
- Fnoord 3y ago> The ceremonial cathartic dunking on Elon is one of my least favorite things about HN. > It comes off as very reddit-esque. [...] From [1] > Please don't post comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit. It's a semi-noob illusion, as old as the hills. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- bandyaboot 3y ago> "Tweets" will also be replaced, according to Twitter's owner Elon Musk, and posts will be called "x's". Is this real life?
- raphaelj 3y agoCould you anyone explain how the same person that founded SpaceX could be so bad at managing Twitter? I mean, he is so bad that a child you'd have managed it better. On the other side, SpaceX is a pretty well managed company, a market leader that manages to sell its services for 30% cheaper than its closest competitor. (I'm not referring to Tesla, as it might just happen that Musk took over when the teams were already efficient and the roadmap well defined. Tesla's success might be pure Musk's luck)
- oneeyedpigeon 3y agoThey're such totally different products that I don't think you can meaningfully compare them. The big thing about Twitter is the social, mass-market angle that Musk seems to not get.
- raphaelj 3y agoThere have been a lot of CEOs that took control of a 2nd company in a totally different field, but have never been so catastrophic. Musk's takeover of Twitter is a total anomaly.
- mattkevan 3y agoSpaceX has a highly competent COO and a team of passionate, skilled people who would put up with any kind of nonsense to build and launch cool rockets. Twitter does not.
- GeekFortyTwo 3y agoSo my theory right now is that the people who need to push back against him have little leverage externally to use. At spaceX, if an idea is stupid the engineers can say that the Government won't allow that, or something similar(ie laws of physics). It creates an external "No", so it's not the engineers fault and they get to continue working on what will work. Similarly at Tesla, it's sometimes simple to say that it's against the law to make that change, but there are less regulations so more stupid stuff gets put in(for me it's the ues of the screen for so much, if it were legal he would have the turn signal controls on that screen). At twitter/X there are basically no regulations, you cannot say that something stupid is not allowed, because there are no rules. He does not allow people to say "No" in his circle. He found success in Tesla and SpaceX because people are empowered at some level to say No. At twitter/X, they are not.
- kotaKat 3y agoOr we could just keep calling it Twitter forever just to enrage Elon that it'll never stick despite how much he wants it to, just so he gets a taste of what it feels like for other people that get stuck with their deadname?
- kypro 3y agoI'm far from a Elon bro, but I guess I've been fairly sympathetic to some of his more stupid decisions in recent years. That said, I simply don't get this. I understand he has a grand vision for Twitter which he's keen to pursue, but either way this is just a dumb decision from a brand perspective. The reason people use Twitter over over similar sites is part because of the brand and part because of user base. Destroying one of those two pillars seemingly on a whim seems like a very bad move however you look at this. My guess (and I acknowledge I'm being extremely charitable here) is that Elon will reverse this. I think sometimes he does this stuff because he knows it will get media attention and he likes to troll. But I guess we'll see. Even if this is just some elaborate joke for media attention it seems like a risky one – especially when Threads is doing so well and offers such a reasonable alternative to this chaos. Also I thought he hired a CEO and was taking a step-back from Twitter? If anyone was going to decide to rename Twitter, surely it would be the new CEO?
- matthewfelgate 3y agoFacebook to be renamed Y.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- dgb23 3y agoElon Musk is either a genius or a fool. I don't understand business decisions at that scale nor am I not smart enough to know which one he is. Only time will tell. But to me this seems tacky. The comments (on Twitter) that are positive about it, look like (possibly AI generated) bullshit hype comments with little to no content (see: NFT, web3, "AI" etc.) The FB/Meta thing felt similar, but in hindsight also smarter, because they didn't change the name of the app. But there is some (small) chance that they pull this off. Twitter is the "microblogging app with a reputation for being a cesspool" that depends on prominent users. Maybe a re-branding and a shift (broadening) of scope is the right way to go? Maybe there's a chance that the new features make Twitter into something bigger that deserves its own name?
- panarky 3y ago> Only time will tell Sometimes it's possible to have good judgement without waiting years for history books to be written.
- CatWChainsaw 3y agoIntuition without analytics is blasphemy to Valley ideology which is why no one seems to get this.
- solarkraft 3y agoYet the brand page still shows the bird. Elon (as well as the wider tech space) seems obsessed with the letter X. I find it to be even more of a cliche than "One" brandings.
- seba_dos1 3y agoSeems fitting - Twitter is like X window system right now: not quite there yet, but surely heading towards being obsolete.
- ChrisArchitect 3y agoOh the Accessibility hawks at accounts like MathAbuse (https://twitter.com/MathAbuse https://twitter.com/MathAbuse) fighting Unicode 'fancy text' are gonna love this
- yowzadave 3y agoLinda Yaccarino sure has some nutty ideas about branding.
- 1letterunixname 3y agoIt's an ugly, confusing, and nonsensical logo that harms Twitter as a brand. Unless it's going to be the x.com micromessaging service, I don't see the point except massaging Herr Leader's ego.