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Twitter’s Rebrand to X Could Be a Trademark Nightmare Thanks to Microsoft
- abhinavk 3y agoMeta also owns the trademark in the context of social networks.
- andrewmunsell 3y agoMeta's trademark registration: https://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=87980831&caseType=SERIAL_NO&searchType=statusSearch https://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=87980831&caseType=SERIAL_...
- justinclift 3y agoWow. That probably only looks like an X if you're drunk and viewing from a distance.
- squarefoot 3y agoI rather see a pair of angle brackets there. The new Twitter logo immediately brought to mind the X-Window system one. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X_Window_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X_Window_System
- dcmatt 3y agoBut theirs is a design mark, just the design is trademarked, not the letter "X" itself. Important distinction
- midoridensha 3y agoMaybe, but I'm hoping Meta and Twitter will somehow get into a long, and very, very expensive courtroom battle over this.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- jacquesm 3y agoMeta and X then...
- chrisco255 3y agoProbably the only thing that's actually trademarkable if your brand is a single letter.
- anigbrowl 3y agoIt trademarked a very different 'X' logo, but they'll file suit anyway as a matter of form.
- pclmulqdq 3y agoThey literally have to, or they may lose the trademark.
- gruez 3y agorelated: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36855342 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36855342
- mywittyname 3y agoIt's kind of dumb that someone could trademark a letter.
- vb6sp6 3y ago[dead]
- WalterBright 3y agoZilog attempted to trademark Z. They failed.
- code_duck 3y agoWhat about Nissan Z? Surely it was never open season for other automakers to name a model that, right?
- ehnto 3y agoThat's the context needed, someone can call their car a Nissan Silvia and expect to fight a Toyota Silvia trademark infringement. But I suspect you may not even beable to fight say, a Ferrari Silvia, since they aren't likely competing contexts.
- CameronNemo 3y agoThe Tesla Model 3 was supposed to be the Model E, but Ford wouldn't give up the mark. https://www.businessinsider.com/ford-model-e-elon-musk-tesla-model-3-electric-cars-2022-3?op=1 https://www.businessinsider.com/ford-model-e-elon-musk-tesla...
- edgyquant 3y agoThis is a bad example as they would be direct competitors within the same market.
- WalterBright 3y agoThe trademark is probably "Nissan Z", not "Z".
- dmix 3y agoIf it is just a trademark issue and not logo design, could Twitter just make it x.com? Elon made x.com in 1999. He could pitch it as a revival rather than simple X the company.
- zadler 3y agoX.com seems a better brand than X anyway…
- nullindividual 3y agoNot to be confused with XCOM.
- jlawer 3y agoConfirmed, the successor to Starship will be SkyRanger, later to be replaced by the Avenger once they master Elerium-115
- code_duck 3y agoIf he had the trademark then, he wouldn't have it 20 years later without having used and defended it in the intervening time.
- dmix 3y agoI don't know how that works though. What if it just dies on the grapevine and no one uses it for 2 decades? AFAIK It got merged into Paypal then was mostly just killed off as a functional trademark
- coffeebeqn 3y agoPlot twist: PayPal will sue them now for using their IP from 20 years ago
- code_duck 3y agoMeta, Microsoft Apple and Google have all used X for one thing or another. Most recently an X trademark in the context of social media was bought by Meta from Microsoft when they acquired Mixer, which became Facebook Gaming.
- minighost 3y agoNo one even mentions Google X which rebranded to just X years ago. Clearly it’s been effective that no one even points this out. Yet another winning project.
- 3cats-in-a-coat 3y agoIt's full of X brands. "Thanks to Microsoft" is kinda arbitrary of the article. I mean "Twitter Videos" are now "X Videos". "The Twitter Files", this series of "investigative" threads... are now "The X Files" (lol). "Direct Messages" will now be referred to as DirectX I guess, or I don't know. X is a letter. It's Roman number ten. It's in millions of brands around the world. It also stands for "X Rated", as in containing excessive violence and nudity. It stands for pornography in some context. It's unsearchable, and barely speakable, as in it's unclear already when you say "X" if you mean Twitter or Elon's son or whatever. What is he doing? We can ask but I doubt he knows himself.
- threeseed 3y agoX also means ecstasy making the phrase "I am on X" problematic.
- KingMob 3y agoTwenty years ago, maybe, but "Molly" supplanted it. Not even sure what the preferred term is now.
- sco1 3y ago> I mean "Twitter Videos" are now "X Videos" Which also happens to already be a porn site…
- Kamq 3y agoThat's part of the joke. "The X Files" is also a thing. So is DirectX.
- falcolas 3y agoThe owners of “X” box? Who woulda thunk it. Now then, of course Musk can challenge it, and given his domain ownership, possibly successfully even. But given the scads of lawyers who Musk owes money to, yet is not paying, who will take the fight on?
- edgyquant 3y agoReally have no idea what you’re referring to with the legal bill things. Other than the company that represented the Twitter deal, which is in the middle of a lawsuit over their charging practices. Seems like you’re mixing up trumps legal history with Musk.
- DropInIn 3y agoOwning a domain doesn't preclude others having ip priority. It's about 'Extant Use', not existence.
- AraceliHarker 3y agoThe "X" trademark owned by Meta belongs to Mixer, a game streaming site formerly run by Microsoft, which was shut down in 2017, but its operations were taken over by Facebook Gaming. The "X" trademark of Mixer was also given to Meta at that time. https://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=87980831&caseType=SERIAL_NO&searchType=statusSearch https://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=87980831&caseType=SERIAL_... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mixer_(service) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mixer_(service)
- stingraycharles 3y agoIsn’t it only the logo that’s trademarked, rather than the name “X”? I am not an expert on trademarks by all means, how likely is it that Meta would actually have a case here?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- turtledragonfly 3y agoThis is correct. I'm not a trademark lawyer, though I have filed some. There are two main types: a "standard character mark" (which is text) and the rest, which are visual logo designs. This one is the latter. That is, they're not trademarking the text "X", just that particular visual representation — the colors involved, etc. You can tell in the TEAS system by looking in the "Mark Information" section, and the "Standard Character Claim: No" line.
- stingraycharles 3y agoRight, and the two X logos (the one from Meta and the one from Twitter) are visually very different I’d say. But of course, I’m not a lawyer.
- psychphysic 3y agoYou already said you're not a trademark lawyer. But could you even get a trademark for X, a single character?
- jrd259 3y agoX window system?
- dboreham 3y agoafaik that's why the domain x.com was registered in the first place (by Marcel and Jeff). x.org was used for X11 purposes and x.com was registered to prevent someone squatting on it.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- threeseed 3y agoEveryone seems to be missing the interesting part here. It's that Twitter is using a generic Monotype font letter for their brand. Which would mean that their brand will not be able to be trademarked and thus anyone could use it to associate their dodgy product with the main site. So I wouldn't worry about Meta, Microsoft etc but about the insane number of X ripoffs we are going to see in the future e.g. X crypto coin, X bots.
- NoZebra120vClip 3y agoYou've confused copyright with trademark here.
- fomine3 3y agoA logo is a trademark
- sschueller 3y agoBut in this case the logo is a character that existed before hand. Nothing was designed or created, an existing typeface is being used as a logo.
- colonwqbang 3y agoTrademarks don't have to be original. It's very common for a mark to be just a word or words written in a standard typeface. Perhaps you are thinking of copyrights?
- bonoboTP 3y agoPeople are hopelessly confused in this area, which is intentional FUD by the "intellectual property" advocates. People, even tech enthusiasts on a platform like this have no idea what the origin and purpose of 1) copyright, 2) trademarks and 3) patents are, even though they are very distinct from each other and even more distinct from the oft-imagined purpose of protecting the company's creative whatever. The overall original purpose of all these laws pointed towards the interests of the public, not the interests of some "intellectual property" owner, similar to protecting actual ownership rights. The original purpose of trademarks is to prevent consumer confusion. That's it. It's not to protect the profits of a company. It's not to reward creativity and hard design work. The original purpose of patents is to encourage disclosing new innovative ideas in order that others can build on top of the invention after having read the patent text (and in exchange for revealing how the innovation works, the inventor gets exclusive rights for a set time, but this is an instrument in achieving the former main purpose). Similarly, copyright incentivizes creative output. (But it only protects the actual expression, not the underlying general ideas etc.)
- blobbers 3y agoThis has to be the most moronic part of Elon's plan. Firing everyone to improve operating margins, I understand that. Iterating on features rapidly, even if they're not quite ready for prime time? That makes a lot of sense if you're trying to beat out the competition. Rebranding your website and conference rooms? This sounds like a stupid waste of time and effort. If you wanted to create X the next twitter, just do a start up. Everyone would have signed up just because Elon Musk was using it. You didn't need to buy twitter for that. Just stupid.
- echelon 3y ago> You didn't need to buy twitter for that. You do need to buy Twitter to avoid running afoul of the SEC. You do need to buy (something) to dump lots of Tesla stock without cratering it.
- kadoban 3y ago> You do need to buy Twitter to avoid running afoul of the SEC. Huh?
- HWR_14 3y agoAt some point in the process, there is a worry that Musks public statements about buying Twitter when he owned like 10% and then not making a real effort to do so may have been investigated as a pump and dump (especially if he followed through in his threat to sell his stock if he wasn't allowed to buy it). Now, I would say that was maybe a month of a long process when that was true.
- omoikane 3y agoIf a complete rebranding to X actually happens, I wonder if someone else is allowed to take over the Twitter brand. But I suspect what will happen is people will continue to call it Twitter and the X name will not stick.
- romanovcode 3y ago> But I suspect what will happen is people will continue to call it Twitter and the X name will not stick. Me too, the problem is that you cannot convert X to a verb. "They x'ed this and that" sounds much dumber than "They tweeted this and that".
- hef19898 3y agoAfter "Let that sink in", we have "I X'ed Twitter".
- sam_bristow 3y ago"The company formerly know as Twitter".
- majewsky 3y agoHow about "the app formerly known as Twitter", to make the acronym read nicely? I think I'm indeed going to start calling it TAFKAT. :)
- rchaud 3y agoI think you're right, HN and news websites are the only places that Facebook is referenced as "Meta", and that's been the name for a couple of years now.
- oneeyedpigeon 3y agoYou mean "Facebook" as a company name, presumably? Isn't the social network still called "Facebook"?
- HWR_14 3y agoElon must have been aware that a single letter can cause a trademark issue. After all, Tesla has models S, 3, X, Y because Ford ready had an "E"
- croisillon 3y agoand (most importantly i think) a T!
- HWR_14 3y agoMost important Ford model, sure. But not relevant to what he's trying to spell out.
- croisillon 3y agouh, took me a while!
- wodenokoto 3y agoI always thought the Tesla naming scheme was inspired by Model T
- oneeyedpigeon 3y agoTo explain most of Elon Musk's decisions, you have to start by thinking what a teenage boy would do.
- HWR_14 3y agoThe Model T was a S3XY car in its day.
- nashashmi 3y agoThe subliminal message nearly escaped me.
- romanovcode 3y agoIt's not "X", it's "𝕏" (U+1D54F) Maybe he should trademark this unicode character instead of letter "X".
- villgax 3y agoAbsolutely love the soon to be unfolded shitshow
- dehrmann 3y agoAt this point, it's more of a shitsaga.
- kens 3y agoIt's interesting to examine this website with the thousands of trademarks for "X". Some are extremely stylized while others are just the letter X. Some are specific to particular colors. Some cover very narrow areas. Microsoft has a lot of trademarks here, but Apple shows up too. https://trademarks.justia.com/search?q=X https://trademarks.justia.com/search?q=X
- World177 3y agoElon Musk also did own x.com in the 1990s. [1] It was sold, but he repurchased it several years ago and left the page to resolve to a simple "x" index. [2] This usage was before Microsoft's 2003 registration. [1] https://web.archive.org/web/19991114130555/http://x.com/management.html https://web.archive.org/web/19991114130555/http://x.com/mana... [2] https://web.archive.org/web/20230401142845/http://x.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20230401142845/http://x.com/
- Closi 3y agoThey made the change but https://x.com https://x.com still leads to a GoDaddy parking page for me…
- esskay 3y agoNo it doesn't, it's been redirecting to twitter.com for a couple of days now. If you're seeing a GoDaddy page then theres some incredibly slow dns caching in your setup.
- thenickdude 3y agoYour browser can also be caching the HTTP redirect itself, especially if they messed up on setting cache lifetimes on it.
- Closi 3y agoIt now redirects to twitter for me, so I guess it was something in the chain that hadn’t refreshed!
- reneberlin 3y agoGodaddy? That made me chuckle. The former richest man uses GD. GD is not known for it's absolutely strong guardiance of domains as a registrar. The web ist full of examples. Even namecheap has a better reputation as a registrar. Yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36854166 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36854166 https://onlineornot.com/guidelines-to-help-avoid-losing-your-domain https://onlineornot.com/guidelines-to-help-avoid-losing-your...
- jillesvangurp 3y agoTrademark law is fairly complicated . One of the aspects that is often overlooked is that you actually have to enforce your trademark rights in order to keep your trademark. Failure to do that, weakens your grip on it. In the case of this particular trademark claim, it's likely to be fairly weak for MS. There are countless legitimate uses of the letter X. They've not been going after a lot of companies over this. And there's also the notion that MS launched the x-box after the x.com domain was registered by Elon Musk. So, any dispute over this could end up being quite hairy for MS. I doubt MS lawyers are going to even bother with a cease and desist letter. Not a laywer of course; this is just my understanding of trademark law. It gets even more complicated when you consider that laws vary internationally.
- therouwboat 3y agoIsn't it even weaker for elon, since he lost the domain around same time that xbox was introduced and only got it back 2017 and even then he said that he had no plans for it.
- jillesvangurp 3y agoDoesn't matter if no-one else has a credible, enforcable claim.
- sparrowInHand 3y agoThere is a german saying: "Satz mit X, war wohl nix." that comes to mind. Anti-Search Engine Optimisation. The world has really passed google by, if this is a valid option.
- thih9 3y ago> "Satz mit X, war wohl nix." Google translate: “Sentence with X was probably nothing.“
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- majewsky 3y agoI'm German. Here's a better translation: "A sentence with X: That evidently didn't work." The "sentence with X" part hinges on the alternative spelling of "nichts" (nothing) as "nix".
- solarkraft 3y agoIdiomatic translation: Well, that was a failure.
- svag 3y agoThere is also this site, https://x.company https://x.company, which is a division of Google / Alphabet... It will be very confusing...
- ibrarmalik 3y agoAlso https://x.org https://x.org
- shri_krishna 3y agoIf you ever want to understand what living in a tech bubble is like, reading the comments here should be sufficient. People feeding off each others conspiracies and hate for Musk. Hilarious to watch
- camgunz 3y agoIt's also pretty close to the logo for x.org.
- alfiedotwtf 3y agoOff-topic I know, but does anyone know the reasoning behind Elon taking $44B and running Twitter into the ground?
- jrockway 3y agoProbably just human nature, right? The normal person version of this is getting excited about a Raspberry Pi, buying one, failing to do your project on the first try, and then shoving the thing into a drawer you never open. If you're the richest person in the world, you have the unique ability to tack on 9 zeroes for your "it could be good" speculative projects.
- reneberlin 3y agoAll the actions combined come down to a fictional handbook written by Musk: "How to destroy a international brand and company properly and fast" I can't believe it was intentional, but i can't imagine any reasons for this, i could only add my speculation.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- z7 3y agoMusk's explanation: "Twitter was acquired by X Corp both to ensure freedom of speech and as an accelerant for X, the everything app. This is not simply a company renaming itself, but doing the same thing. 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 world. The Twitter name does not make sense in that context, so we must bid adieu to the bird." https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1683656350046232578 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1683656350046232578
- FrustratedMonky 3y agoWho cares if 'Twitter' doesn't make sense for things over 140 char. They didn't re-brand 'Coke' when they took out the 'Cocaine'. It takes a lot of effort to have a global brand. They already have it in 'Twitter'. X is not unique enough to ever stand out. This is such a bad decision, it is just frosting for all the people sitting back eating popcorn watching this dumpster fire.
- mikrotikker 3y agoYou want an SEO position at X Corp?
- faitswulff 3y agoAnyone can have an SEO position wherever they like at the low, low cost of $45Bn
- censor_me 3y ago[dead]
- yreg 3y agoBy the way Coca-Cola still uses coca leafs in the production, although perhaps it's so dilluted there are no traces left in the final product. There is a single company that is authorized to import coca leafs to US. They create a cocaine free extract which they sell to Coca-Cola as an ingredient for their syrup. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stepan_Company#Coca_extraction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stepan_Company#Coca_extraction
- nextlevelwizard 3y agoOh, is this why I haven't been able to look at twitter links (without an account)?
- philip1209 3y agoWasn’t x.ai some kind of meeting scheduling startup about ten years ago?
- rexreed 3y agoYes. But then folks realized that the supposed-AI tool actually used people pretending to be bots: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jul/06/artificial-intelligence-ai-humans-bots-tech-companies https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jul/06/artificia... X.ai was subsequently acquired in 2021 by Bizzabo: https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2021/06/03/2241277/0/en/Bizzabo-Acquires-x-ai-to-Launch-AI-powered-Scheduling-Accelerate-Personalized-Event-Experiences.html https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2021/06/03/224127... Bizzabo then shut down the X.ai tool: https://www.bizzabo.com/blog/xai-sunset https://www.bizzabo.com/blog/xai-sunset And then they sold the X.ai domain to you know who: https://www.theverge.com/2023/4/14/23684005/elon-musk-new-ai-company-x https://www.theverge.com/2023/4/14/23684005/elon-musk-new-ai...
- dools 3y agoTwitter's rebrand to X could also be a nightmare because it's fucking dumb.
- Sosh101 3y agoThe letter X, brought to you today by Mr X (Elon Musk).
- phpisthebest 3y agoThis could have been soo much better. Personally if he wanted to make an "everything app" I would have gone with making X an "exclusive" edition of twitter, i.e replacing twitter blue. Twitter is a free app for the unwashed masses and X is the Exclusive App.... if you login to twitter with a X login you get the rebrand Then add new features to X
- NickC25 3y agoExcept he can't make an "everything app" because we're not in China. People don't want the "convenience" of being able to do everything in the same app because they rightfully fear monopolies and over-consolidation of major corporations, and they doubly fear the government and corporations creating a way-too-convenient method of collecting every detail, large and small, about one's life in a single app. WeChat is what it is in China because it replicates (in a sense) how things are in Chinese society. Also, X is fucking stupid.
- linuxftw 3y agoPeople don't fear this at all. They have their iphones, imessage, apple tv, apple pay. The only thing apple is missing is a social network (AFAIK they don't have one).
- maaanu 3y agoThe market share of the iphone is about 20%. So I think your comparison falls short with the very first item. I am okay, to be totally vendor locked in the apple-ecosystem, because Androids market share is so much higher. If the iPhone fails to be a good product I will just switch. I am okay, to be totally vendor locked in gcp, because aws is a thing...
- ithkuil 3y agoI think that "Y" would have much better name. Alice: it's called Y Bob: But why? Alice: Yeah, Y Bob: no, I mean, why? Alice: Yeah, you heard right, Y. ...
- snowwrestler 3y agoOne interesting aspect is that trademarks have to be in use in order to be defended. If Musk’s X moves away from the name “Twitter” and the bird logo as completely as they seem likely to, those will become essentially undefended trademarks that someone else could start using. Want to found Twitter all over again? There are ways (legal tricks) to rebrand while defending the old brand. But these require detailed legal advice, disciplined ops, and a will to do so. I’d say that it looks like Musk is lacking all three of those at X right now.
- marvinblum 3y agoThis reminds me of Twix, which every few years or so brings out a "special" Raiders edition to defend the old brand. Perhaps Musk will do something similar. He's definitely not going to give up Twitter, and even if he does, he'll keep the domain.
- tenpies 3y agoAnd it's not just a trademark matter. I haven't looked in detail at how the Twitter acquisition was structured, but somewhere there's a spreadsheet with the words "goodwill" and next to those words there's a huge number reflecting what Musk overpaid for Twitter. To simply stop using the Twitter brand, logo, and verb-ology would be a huge slap to that number, not that it really means anything financially. See: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/g/goodwill.asp https://www.investopedia.com/terms/g/goodwill.asp
- snowwrestler 3y agoThere are already reports that some investors have marked down their Twitter stakes by 2/3 or more.
- rurp 3y ago> he'll keep the domain Unless the company forgets to renew the domain because everyone who would be responsible for that has quite or been fired. Not that I think this is at all likely, but God would it be hilarious.
- noarchy 3y agoSo is this how Elon Musk performs when there is no board of directors or shareholders to rein him in? Because this entire rebranding effort looks like something he woke up and declared on a whim. Zero coordination or planning.
- xutopia 3y agoIt doesn't matter if it's a trademark nightmare... it's a branding nightmare. Musk is showing the world that he got lucky with his previous ventures. His management of Twitter has been a display of poor management at every level. If you were less than a year into your position as CEO of a company with revenue divided by half, ex-employees suing you, banned journalists from your platform in the middle of some half-thought-out free speech debate... would you not be fired? Everything about this makes me think he's just too rich to be fired... anyone else would have been. He just owns too much to not be given any more chances.
- chaosbolt 3y ago[flagged]
- delfinom 3y ago>but for a reusable rocket company and an electric car company? The word lucky is wrong here. He does seem to be a decent investor at finding underserved market niches which can grow. However, a lot of this is before he let social media rot his brain and let his ego run rampant.
- Tostino 3y agoEspecially market niches where there is a lot of government money be spent. A bit ironic considering his more recent rhetoric.
- NickM 3y agoI understand you guys hate him because the media basically tells you to and because he doesn't behave like your average tech founder I was with you until this part. I used to be a Musk fan but he's done a lot of things to make people legitimately dislike him over the last few years. I agree it doesn't make his past accomplishments less impressive, but people don't just hate him "because the media basically tells you to".
- 3y ago
- ojosilva 3y agoQuick recap of a rebranding mess: - X axes a renowned, recognizable tech brand - X was done hastily, without proper planning - X won't be a dictionary word, hardly a verb, not anything cultural - X means nothing really, like a branding "*", the algebra/programming x, even more generic than "meta" or "alphabet" - X is another gazillion brands, logos and trademarks - X is impossible to search - X is so X-Rated - X certifies that Elon is nuts and has no idea what to do with this acquisition - Users are vowing to resist, refraining from using X whenever possible But it DOES make sense in Elon's World: - Twitter as we know it is gone anyway, so we might as well call it... X - X is his SpaceX thing, his pre-PayPal made-me-rich thing, his fetish letter, his Rosebud - X is like sex, like Tesla models S,3,X,Y - a cool "bro" brand, fits Elon Musk maturity level very well because sex sells (at least for cars and rockets it does) - No need to search for X. Search is dead. X is the new search, especially once it becomes a (sentient?) AI [1] https://x.ai https://x.ai - X creates user resistance, friction and backlash, which means it's polarizing and Elon only thrives in polarized ecosystems - Polarization arouses the media so much it will have free press for a while - It sounds like something out of a Marvel movie. Like a villain's world-threatening crime syndicate. - "It's just X, just fucking X, it's really badass dude" My take on this: - Twitter had to rebrand anyway if it were to evolve into a disrupting Musk company - it made no sense to just be the old, stagnated Twitter minus headcount, moderation and ad revenue. Another logo or word by itself would not cut it or be up to the task. It had to be something in-your-face like... X. - X stock will probably soar when it hits Wall Street (again). The marketing actually feels solid or at least more in line with his other companies, and definitely stronger than Alphabet and Meta's wishy-washy rebranding. Now X Corp needs to deliver new moneys, beyond the dwindling ad revenue to prove itself as a Google and Meta's worse nightmare.
- helmsb 3y agoSeems like the only people making money in this whole thing is the company hired to change the sign every other week when Musk decides to make a joke or do a sudden rebrand.
- unlikelymordant 3y agoUnfortunately, even the sign company is having troubles: https://www.theverge.com/2023/7/24/23140317/twitter-sign-sf-hq-removal-demolition-police https://www.theverge.com/2023/7/24/23140317/twitter-sign-sf-...
- adamsmith143 3y agoWhat?? You mean Elon made another colossal mistake, bbbut hes such a business genius...
- PM_me_your_math 3y agoI enjoy reading the expert opinions of all the main characters who don't even have a basis point, let alone a fraction, of the man's net worth.
- adamsmith143 3y agoYeah so hard to make money during the Dotcom boom with all your dad's apartheid emerald mine money. How does his boot taste?
- PM_me_your_math 3y agoMusk's dad gave him $250,000,000,000? That must have been a lot of emeralds! What boot, malaka? Maybe you should grow up a bit and realize your persecution complex is self-induced.
- dorkwood 3y agoI do think it's important to look at a person's past accomplishments when deciding whether to listen to them or not. I'd even say it's the most important thing. But is there a line where a person's present actions start to outweigh their past successes?
- beeftime 3y agofamously, no one with a lot of money has ever made a bad business decision
- beeftime 3y agoblowing up one of the single most recognizable brands in the entire world so you can indulge your puerile obsession you have with the letter "x" and drive the 44bn albatross you were forced to buy because of your inability to watch your mouth even deeper into unprofitability is world-historic business genius mindset. you guys wouldn't understand.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- azraeldv 3y agowhat if every alphabet is within their trademark jurisdiction, then our capitalism is basically doomed.
- mwidell 3y agoMost people would probably agree that Musk made some very bad and rookie-looking decisions since acquiring Twitter. Also he has said a lot of very controversial things in the last 1-2 years. Before that he arguably was a lot more well respected as an entrepreneur - keeping a lower profile and building a couple of extremely successful businesses in parallel. My big question that I’m still searching for an answer to: Did he drastically change as a person in the last couple of years? Or was he just “lucky” to build SpaceX and Tesla into tremendous successes? Or is he still a genius and all of us simply can’t see how he’s making Twitter into the next big success in his CV? If he did change as a person - why? What happened? Bad breakup? Drug abuse? Depression? Too much self confidence? Too much stress for too long? Something else?
- imoverclocked 3y agoI think he’s upset that he was forced to buy the company and is actively running it into the ground.
- heywhatupboys 3y agoblatantly wrong
- kaicianflone 3y agoIt’s not like the very first thing Musk did was dismantle the verification system… even a tiered verification system would have made it less blatant that Musk is destroying Twitter.
- the_optimist 3y agoI will argue with your statement that “he was respected as an entrepreneur.” It is arguable, and this weasel word forms the basis for your subsequent argument. It’s wrong. The question is “respected by whom.” I do not believe that anyone who respected him for entrepreneurship beforehand now disrespects him as an entrepreneur. I do believe that people who marginally understood his work but have vested interests in the existing structure, including “news” orgs, reporters, political hacks, and direct competitors, have tried to create controversy and confusion around Musk. Of course this would be expected to happen, and those gossipers and murmurers who can be influential will be among the uninformed.
- ergonaught 3y agoBizarre that Zuck and Musk and I suppose "Goog" can have these spasms of inability to understand branding. Bezos needs a fit of it so we can rename Amazon to, uh, Fwoop. Why not.
- honeybadger1 3y agoHe's done just fine considering all of the fud pieces spread by mainstream outlets and hacker news comments that are mostly lies and only part of the available information about him and his companies. The salt amongst engineers / developers that are not working for his companies should be a thing of study, methinks it's mostly driven by jealousy. Looking forward to what comes from all this 𝕏 stuff.
- JohnFen 3y agoI'm looking forward to the martial arts combat between Musk and Nadella now.
- politelemon 3y agoPoorly titled and I'm surprised nobody is calling it out. The body of the article shows that there is an entire minefield of trademark issues with several companies and entities to navigate, but the blame is being placed solely on MS' feet as though they should have known, 20 years ago, what Twitter would be doing today. A better one might be Twitter’s Rebrand Is A Field Of Nightmares.