7 ms·

Is 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 i

Is 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 ago
It 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 ago
  That'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 ago
    Like 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.
    - johnnyanmac 3y ago
      It may be a slightly contestable take, but I do stand by it. He got ahead on space tech because NASA has had it's budgets and missions slashed for decades. Satellite internet was deprioritized in 1st world counties because of physics (and political oligarchies, of course), and Tesla was far from the only competition in the EV space, even a decade ago. He does know how to (or maybe got lucky) find what isn't working and find the talent that can make it work. (I will give him props for rolling out the super charger stations, though. And no screwing up with some proprietary schlock like other dealers would have tried to do.) I very much feel like this is a Jobs v. Wozniak moment, too. It's clear there was was some unsung hero who could realize Musk's crazy dreams and even reel him in when he got too crazy. But for Musk, he simply had the funds and willingness to take the risk. I'm guessing that "Woz" left or is simply heads down at SpaceX/Tesla given recent decisions, though.
    - cruano 3y ago
      > he's the guy who started companies aiming to make satellite internet that doesn't suck He started SpaceX because he wanted human missions to mars, he's as "progressive" as every American was in the 70s. > popularize electric cars when every manufacturer had given up on them Eh... "The company was incorporated as Tesla Motors, Inc. on July 1, 2003, by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning."
- leononame 3y ago
  Interesting that he seems so set on X then. I don't think they'll be able to pull this off - it could work but X is too overloaded for it to be associated mainly with Twitter. I don't think they have the reach to make this work
  - gnz11 3y ago
    Musk is trying to create a WeChat clone. He’s just using Twitter as a kind of starting point. A WeChat clone seems ripe for antitrust laws though, but what do I know?
    - flagrant_taco 3y ago
      Do we enforce antitrust laws often? He may be looking at Google, Amazon, and Apple as examples that big tech can destroy all the trust they want and monopoly away with little regard for legal implications
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- yowzadave 3y ago
  He also named his son X, and his daughter Exa. It seems to be a kind of fixation.
- anonymousab 3y ago
  Changing Twitter to X has obviously been part of the plan with Musk from the start, sure. But rushing it out in the past couple of days was absolutely an impulse Musk-only or Musk+1 decision, like many recent Twitter changes. Especially given what we've heard from staff at Twitter so far. And, of course, given the fact that so little on the site was actually updated and Musk has already talked about not even thinking about things like retweets yet.
code_duck 3y ago
It seems like an inappropriate name to me. It does have an association with SpaceX though, which is viewed positively by most people. If he called it TweetX that would have been great.
- mrweasel 3y ago
  If you really wanted to rebrand Twitter, then at least go via TweetX. Rebranding is normally a multi-year process. We have a supermarket chain that's rebranding all it stores from five or six different names down to two (two that still reflects that this is one company), they started years ago and won't be done for another two years. Perhaps Musk just goes "Screw it, I'm building the app I always wanted" even if he has to build it on the ashes of Twitter, ejected Tesla auto-pilot code, a couple of rocket boosters and a domain he had in the draw.
3cats-in-a-coat 3y ago
We know for a fact it was a stupid impulse decision, because when asked "how should we call tweets and retweets now" he replies "x's" and for retweets he said "this should be completely rethought". Yet to be rethought? You think about stuff like this BEFORE you change your brand, not after. He's nuts. Maybe that's part of his success throwing himself into areas no one else dares, like EVs and self-landing rockets, but he's just a chaotic agent, he doesn't have instinct for what will work, he just has instinct for being random and confusing everyone with it.
- tyingq 3y ago
  > "how should we call tweets and retweets now" Equis and Dos Equis, maybe?
  - igetspam 3y ago
    Do DMs become directX's?
    - 3cats-in-a-coat 3y ago
      There we go, one more.
- asddubs 3y ago
  people will just end up calling them posts and reposts or something along those lines
  - 3cats-in-a-coat 3y ago
    Of course they will. But branding the action is what every single company in the world is trying to do because it's like tattooing their presence into your brain. Look at what the parent comment up there said: "it's hard to google it". Did you catch that? He didn't say "to web search it", he said a brand. He, and all of us, are like a free walking talking Google ads every time we say "to google it". The same has been happening when anyone, or a media says "in a tweet" or "he tweeted" or "retweeting" and so on. Everything can have "a post", and everyone can "post a message". But you can only "tweet" on "Twitter". And now there's no even sane way to use this new "brand" as a verb, or as a noun of a post. There's no sane way to use it at all. It's a horrific brand. People will not even use it because it's unclear what you're talking about. Look at every single instance when Elon Musk says the name of his own son, he doesn't say "X", he says "Lil X". He has to prepend this "Lil" in front because otherwise it's absolutely unclear what the hell he's talking about. It's also full of registered trademarks that use "X" in their name, because "X" is a letter. So now The Twitter Files... become The X Files. And "Twitter Videos" become "X Videos". I can keep going forever. It's a damn mess.
oneeyedpigeon 3y ago
I think the strongest association is with sex — as in xvideos, etc.
- leononame 3y ago
  Meh, that would be more with XXX imo. Just X doesn't make me think of porn personally
  - jaynetics 3y ago
    For someone who looks at web trends occasionally, the association is pretty strong. Three of the top 50 domains start with x and these are all porn. xvideos, xhamster, xnxx. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_visited_websites https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_visited_website...
  - thinkingemote 3y ago
    "ex" is what I think.
- rsynnott 3y ago
  Yeah, as far as domain names go, 'x' means "prefix indicating that this is a porn site". Bizarre decision.
mcfedr 3y ago
It's not you. It's not even musk's first company called x
leshenka 3y ago
It's just Elon Musk being Elon Musk with all his usual shenanigans. I think it's just a game for him.

Fnoord 3y ago

It 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 ago
That'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 ago
  Like 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.
  - johnnyanmac 3y ago
    It may be a slightly contestable take, but I do stand by it. He got ahead on space tech because NASA has had it's budgets and missions slashed for decades. Satellite internet was deprioritized in 1st world counties because of physics (and political oligarchies, of course), and Tesla was far from the only competition in the EV space, even a decade ago. He does know how to (or maybe got lucky) find what isn't working and find the talent that can make it work. (I will give him props for rolling out the super charger stations, though. And no screwing up with some proprietary schlock like other dealers would have tried to do.) I very much feel like this is a Jobs v. Wozniak moment, too. It's clear there was was some unsung hero who could realize Musk's crazy dreams and even reel him in when he got too crazy. But for Musk, he simply had the funds and willingness to take the risk. I'm guessing that "Woz" left or is simply heads down at SpaceX/Tesla given recent decisions, though.
  - cruano 3y ago
    > he's the guy who started companies aiming to make satellite internet that doesn't suck He started SpaceX because he wanted human missions to mars, he's as "progressive" as every American was in the 70s. > popularize electric cars when every manufacturer had given up on them Eh... "The company was incorporated as Tesla Motors, Inc. on July 1, 2003, by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning."
leononame 3y ago
Interesting that he seems so set on X then. I don't think they'll be able to pull this off - it could work but X is too overloaded for it to be associated mainly with Twitter. I don't think they have the reach to make this work
- gnz11 3y ago
  Musk is trying to create a WeChat clone. He’s just using Twitter as a kind of starting point. A WeChat clone seems ripe for antitrust laws though, but what do I know?
  - flagrant_taco 3y ago
    Do we enforce antitrust laws often? He may be looking at Google, Amazon, and Apple as examples that big tech can destroy all the trust they want and monopoly away with little regard for legal implications
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
yowzadave 3y ago
He also named his son X, and his daughter Exa. It seems to be a kind of fixation.
anonymousab 3y ago
Changing Twitter to X has obviously been part of the plan with Musk from the start, sure. But rushing it out in the past couple of days was absolutely an impulse Musk-only or Musk+1 decision, like many recent Twitter changes. Especially given what we've heard from staff at Twitter so far. And, of course, given the fact that so little on the site was actually updated and Musk has already talked about not even thinking about things like retweets yet.

code_duck 3y ago

It seems like an inappropriate name to me. It does have an association with SpaceX though, which is viewed positively by most people. If he called it TweetX that would have been great.

mrweasel 3y ago
If you really wanted to rebrand Twitter, then at least go via TweetX. Rebranding is normally a multi-year process. We have a supermarket chain that's rebranding all it stores from five or six different names down to two (two that still reflects that this is one company), they started years ago and won't be done for another two years. Perhaps Musk just goes "Screw it, I'm building the app I always wanted" even if he has to build it on the ashes of Twitter, ejected Tesla auto-pilot code, a couple of rocket boosters and a domain he had in the draw.

3cats-in-a-coat 3y ago

We know for a fact it was a stupid impulse decision, because when asked "how should we call tweets and retweets now" he replies "x's" and for retweets he said "this should be completely rethought". Yet to be rethought? You think about stuff like this BEFORE you change your brand, not after. He's nuts. Maybe that's part of his success throwing himself into areas no one else dares, like EVs and self-landing rockets, but he's just a chaotic agent, he doesn't have instinct for what will work, he just has instinct for being random and confusing everyone with it.

tyingq 3y ago
> "how should we call tweets and retweets now" Equis and Dos Equis, maybe?
- igetspam 3y ago
  Do DMs become directX's?
  - 3cats-in-a-coat 3y ago
    There we go, one more.
asddubs 3y ago
people will just end up calling them posts and reposts or something along those lines
- 3cats-in-a-coat 3y ago
  Of course they will. But branding the action is what every single company in the world is trying to do because it's like tattooing their presence into your brain. Look at what the parent comment up there said: "it's hard to google it". Did you catch that? He didn't say "to web search it", he said a brand. He, and all of us, are like a free walking talking Google ads every time we say "to google it". The same has been happening when anyone, or a media says "in a tweet" or "he tweeted" or "retweeting" and so on. Everything can have "a post", and everyone can "post a message". But you can only "tweet" on "Twitter". And now there's no even sane way to use this new "brand" as a verb, or as a noun of a post. There's no sane way to use it at all. It's a horrific brand. People will not even use it because it's unclear what you're talking about. Look at every single instance when Elon Musk says the name of his own son, he doesn't say "X", he says "Lil X". He has to prepend this "Lil" in front because otherwise it's absolutely unclear what the hell he's talking about. It's also full of registered trademarks that use "X" in their name, because "X" is a letter. So now The Twitter Files... become The X Files. And "Twitter Videos" become "X Videos". I can keep going forever. It's a damn mess.

oneeyedpigeon 3y ago

I think the strongest association is with sex — as in xvideos, etc.

leononame 3y ago
Meh, that would be more with XXX imo. Just X doesn't make me think of porn personally
- jaynetics 3y ago
  For someone who looks at web trends occasionally, the association is pretty strong. Three of the top 50 domains start with x and these are all porn. xvideos, xhamster, xnxx. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_visited_websites https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_visited_website...
- thinkingemote 3y ago
  "ex" is what I think.
rsynnott 3y ago
Yeah, as far as domain names go, 'x' means "prefix indicating that this is a porn site". Bizarre decision.

mcfedr 3y ago

It's not you. It's not even musk's first company called x

leshenka 3y ago

It's just Elon Musk being Elon Musk with all his usual shenanigans. I think it's just a game for him.