12 ms·
Changing its name tanked X's downloads in App Store and Play Store
- NoZebra120vClip 3y agoIn my Play Store experience, a modicum of trust is established merely over the icon. If I see an app and positively confirm that its icon is official and authentic, that's a good flag. If I search for something and I see a bunch of janky fake icons, then I avoid them all. Of course an icon is not the be-all-end-all; you need to check the publisher too, and reputable apps usually have Verified Publishers to go with them. So that's why, even if your X app shows up in a search for the term "Twitter", if your app doesn't bear the officially-trademarked blue birdie icon, then everyone's going to squint and scoff at it, or not even notice it. Awhile ago I was playing mobile games with a friend, and she has iPhone while I have Android. So part of the challenge was finding a cross-platform game. And many of them didn't have verified publishers or anything, so the best way to ensure that we both downloaded the same app was to show her the icon so that she could hunt for the same image in the App Store. Icons are also becoming the default way of identifying apps on your system, too. While Android 11 still has text captions for icons on the Home screen, I find them superfluous. In fact, I've taken to creating folders and labeling them with several emoji, and no Latin text at all. I've also done this to my Bookmarks Bar: saves a lot of screen space!
- duskwuff 3y ago> Of course an icon is not the be-all-end-all; you need to check the publisher too, and reputable apps usually have Verified Publishers to go with them. And the X app is verified on both stores as "X Corp", which doesn't exactly build confidence.
- katbyte 3y agoSounds like E Corp from Mr robot
- aqfamnzc 3y agoRe: bookmarks bar, you can also just not use a title which leaves the favicon only. Works a treat for the simpler root URLs.
- justin_oaks 3y ago> This rebranding would be a firing offense if the mastermind behind it didn’t own the company It continues to amaze me how poor branding decisions get made when you could have easily predicted this. I'm reminded of how poorly named the Go programming language is. So many people refer to it as "golang" since "go" is too common of a word. If I name something I want people to search for, I'll definitely go with something more unique.
- bombcar 3y agoThis is why the Apple renaming of various applications to “generic term.app” annoys me so much. iTunes I can search for. Music I can’t.
- rcme 3y agoAt least you can search Apple Music. What are you supposed to search for when looking for X in the App Store? X X?
- threeseed 3y agoThe surreal part is that X is pushing more towards TikTok style video content. Search for "x videos funny cats" and ask how on earth that is going to be sustainable for their brand.
- LordShredda 3y agoAlmost got me, God elon is a moron
- _hcuq 3y agoYeah. Should have called it XXX. 3 x's are better than one....
- marcosdumay 3y agoInterestingly, DDG finds a lot of real cats on youtube.
- afavour 3y agoAll that remains is for someone to convince Musk to sell them the trademark for Twitter (suggesting a price of $69.420 ought to do it) and the revival can begin.
- eye-robot 3y agoPerfect... Just perfect!
- bashtoni 3y agoYou have wonder if the plan was to buy Twitter specifically to kill it. If that's the case, Musk is doing brilliantly - plenty of scope for plausible deniability while succeeding at his goal.
- midoridensha 3y agoIf that's the case, then I applaud him. But considering the kind of BS he's been spewing for years, I don't think this is some kind of secret long-term plan to destroy Twitter; I think he really drinks his own kool-aid.
- macksd 3y agoI don't think so either. But I also know people who still think Trump is playing some 4D chess game and has the corrupt politicians and media right where he wants them. Any day now he's gonna win.
- latency-guy2 3y agoSame for Bernie after he lost twice lol, somehow both sets of these idiots are front page day in day out though
- losteric 3y agoThere's a difference between an idealist in a cynical world, and lying about things proven and admitted to be lies for personal gain.
- lern_too_spel 3y agoJust like Trump's followers who think the election was stolen, there are a lot of Sanders followers who think the nomination was stolen, despite the votes going massively against him. The difference is that Trump is telling his followers that this nonsense is true, while Sanders supporters are making their own conspiracy theories.
- throwahrjd 3y agoCouldn't Elon have shutdown Twitter entirely in a single day? Why the long process? Is he punishing someone for it? Is it a private bet betweens billionaires?
- mcpackieh 3y agoDo you remember Sid in Toy Story?
- tmpX7dMeXU 3y agoLiability.
- beckingz 3y agoDoesn't want to get sued by the people who put up the majority of the money.
- losteric 3y agoHe took Saudi money.
- abittooliteral 3y ago[flagged]
- NicoJuicy 3y agoI don't think he cares. It's his vanity project since he couldn't do it with PayPal since everyone disagreed and kicked him out. He wants to show them ( Thiel) he was right all along. It's not a big chess move, it's childish ego all the way. I understand why he likes Trump, even while Elon is way smarter ( not wiser though )
- iambateman 3y agoI agree that the rebrand will probably go down as a poor rollout, but subjectively Twitter is the best it’s been in years right now. Lots of replies from real people having interesting conversations. I’m no fan of Elmo running the company, but I’m glad that Twitter is more fun for me now than it has been in 7 years.
- xNeil 3y agoHard agree. Twitter used to be actively bad for me - the for you page is simply incredible, and dialogue on the platform enriches my life every day I use it. It's the first time in my experience I actually feel like a social network is a net positive to my life. Opening X (Twitter) genuinely gives me joy.
- zarzavat 3y agoI also have a similar perception. It’s probably because all of the whiny people who used to fill up my feed have left, for Mastodon or otherwise. However, I don’t find Twitter any more compelling than before, still way too much noise for what little signal you get. The best Twitter was around 2009, when the timeline was linear, retweets were effortful, and you didn’t have to use the God-forsaken official client.
- iambateman 3y ago2009 Twitter was a special time on the internet, for sure.
- latency-guy2 3y agoIt sucks the rest of the internet has to deal with the fallout though. I hope that Mastodon contains them for the rest of eternity
- xNeil 3y agoThat's nice to hear - I didn't use Twitter in 2009! As I've said earlier - the groupthink on HN is at astoundingly high levels nowadays. First everyone said subscriptions are the way to go. Seriously - this was unanimous. And absolutely everyone on HN would complain about their linear timeline being taken away. Now that Elon has bought the company, he's introduced a (good) subscription based product (while simultaneously keeping free access), and he's reintroduced the linear timeline. And HN can't seem to stop whining. Honestly considering leaving this site - I can't seem to find any genuine debates any more. Not that it has anything to do with HN - what do I know, this perception of HN of mine might just be me seeing the platform through heavy bias. But the perception is there.
- mcpackieh 3y agoEverybody except Elon Musk is better off for it. How can we convince Zuckerberg to follow suite?
- xNeil 3y agoApp Store rankings most definitely cannot be taken to be a reliable indicator for anything. Max is at No. 3, while Netflix is at No. 29 - this doesn't actually tell you anything, except that Max has more downloads at the moment. Threads is obviously going to rank high, because the vast majority of Instagram users haven't used it yet - they're going to download it now, and so it's at No. 2. Looking at how badly the platform seems to have tanked from launch, I'm not keeping my hopes up on it being a competitor to X in any meaningful way.
- mitthrowaway2 3y agoIt would be nice if apps could be ranked weighted by install order. When someone is setting up a new phone, I want to know which apps they consider so essential that they install them right away. That's a much better signal of utility (to me) than overall app install volume trends.
- sgerenser 3y agoOn iOS this still wouldn’t mean much, as anyone upgrading from a previous iPhone (probably 90% or more of users) just do an automatic transfer from their old phone. This just redownloads all the apps in a semi-random order.
- asutekku 3y agoI do have an access to a couple of third party AppStore analytics tools and they clearly show a drop both on iOS and on Android after initial spike after rebranding. On iOS, the downloads are roughly half of what they were at the beginning of the year and 1/3 less than what they were during the month before the rebranding. Note that these are only rough estimates but they are relatively good at predicting the trend.
- JKCalhoun 3y ago> and the insipid slogan “Blaze your glory!” Iam14 and this is funny: blaze, like getting high.
- alephxyz 3y agoIt sounds like the slogan of an AliExpress GPU brand.
- ajani 3y agoSurely the dip is temporary.
- _8j50 3y agoRemember when netflix was renamed to Qwix? The difference here is that elon is not concerned about losing billions because he will still have billions and remain in the top 5 billionaire club. I need to rewatch citizen kane sometime soon.
- burk96 3y agoI don't understand the Musk fandom in the comments, I've never seen anything to signal to me he's been anything but a savvy investor? He's a better engineer than the average finance bro sure, but seems far from notable in any discipline this site typically cares about? His acquisition of Twitter destroyed the lives of many hard working people and has made it okay for many more companies to follow similar dark patterns (insane API pricing, furthering content lockdown, probably other stuff I don't like to see in the industry)
- woooooo 3y agoNot a fanboy but he definitely did something with SpaceX and Tesla. Both companies were laughable ideas that would clearly never work.
- JuanPosadas 3y agoHe used them to brand himself as Cool Sci-fi CEO. His Cool Sci-Fi CEO branding may have had a positive impact on the company. I'd like to see any evidence that any other contributions of his were actually positive.
- woooooo 3y agoBezos has had a rocket company for over a decade and never reached orbit. I agree that Musk looks like an ass with Twitter but it's a heck of a coincidence that both Tesla and SpaceX were successful doing things nobody thought was possible. Having spent some time in corporate america, it's a pretty low bar for execs in technical fields. Maybe he just had to be reasonably bright and focused on the mission instead of internal politics.
- JuanPosadas 3y ago> it's a heck of a coincidence I could make the same argument for me. It's a heck of a coincidence the place where I work had no product or revenue or customers before they hired me and a few years later suddenly we have 5 products, huge contracts, and are one of the most hot brand names in our AI niche. But is my contribution interchangeable with any rando or am I a 10x engineer? Was my contribution even net positive or did others on my team carry my dead weight to the finish line?
- zumu 3y agoDid Elon just play a lot of X-COM or something? His love of "x.com" makes no obvious sense to me.
- kkarakk 3y agoFrom what i've understood reading about the rebrand - broad strokes - he wants "X" to be an all in one portal to future internet experiences like metaverse/AI/crypto. Kinda like metaverse stuff at Meta but instead of being a separate thing from the successful base product just rebrand the base product so people expect it to be more. It sorta makes sense but could also be some kinda ego move idk anymore.
- dorkwood 3y agoI wouldn’t be surprised if Musk’s plan was to tank downloads so that the news media would write about X, increasing publicity. Kind of genius, really.
- thaway_thaway34 3y agoexcept....it didn't work??
- JuanPosadas 3y agoI wouldn’t be surprised if Musk’s plan was to have the illusion of a failed plan to tank downloads so that the news media would write about the failed plan to tank downloads of X, increasing publicity. Kind of genius, really.
- marcosdumay 3y agoWinning all the way until right before the floor!
- Gud 3y agoI think people are looking at this from the wrong perspective. X.com is not a rebrand. Elon Musk is trying to build a new service and is just jumpstarting it by shifting the Twitter user base.
- ajani 3y agoTesla to become roadX.