photo credit: Mackenna Miller
Twitter, an app that is loved by some and hated by others, was gone within a day. The new and unheard of “X” took its place after years of tweets being posted and controversy surrounding those tweets taking place.
Elon Musk recently rebranded an app that is well known and used worldwide: Twitter. This app has been recently changed to X after only around a year of Musk owning it. Twitter has been around since 2006 when it was first created and has since grown into a major social media platform, according to tecktarget.com senior editor Amanda Hetler.
After 17 years of being called Twitter, it is going to be hard getting not only the American users, but every user worldwide to stop referring to an app with a name that no longer exists. Ever since Twitter changed to X in the App Store, I have heard multiple people say they aren’t going to call the app X and some even say that they are just going to delete the app all together.
Musk has so much money that he could have easily branched out Twitter and made a new app with all of the new features he is hoping to incorporate into X, such as being able to listen to podcasts, shop, conduct financial work and watch longer videos. These are all features of a super app that Musk hopes X will become. Since he is planning for so many different changes, it would be easier if he created a new app instead of altering one.
X has not changed much yet except for the name since Musk has bought it. When I explored X I found that there are still the normal short posts, recently known as tweets, longer posts, short videos and even an opportunity for me to go live. I also discovered that there has been a new feature added to X along with the continuation of the old features; premium subscribers can now post videos up to two to three hours.
If X becomes a super app, it will be in competition with China’s super app called, China’s WeChat. Musk wanted an app that incorporates everything for the United States, just like China has. Rebranding rather than recreating has angered some users.
Mark Zuckerberg has jumped at the chance to take former Twitter users to his new app called Threads. Threads is for Instagram users only and is almost identical to the old Twitter. Unlike Musk, Zuckerberg created a new app for his idea and released it around the same time Twitter was rebranded to X.
Zuckerberg was smart in his timing of the release of his new app and acquired 100 million users very fast within the first five days of the app launch, according to businessofapps.com. With Musk’s rebranding, it seems to the world like Threads might become the new Twitter.
Threads doesn’t have ads like X does, but X allowed me to post more material including video and character length as well as look up certain categories that interested me, not just people and their usernames. I noticed I could also leave voice messages on X and join certain communities that like the same content as I do.
Instagram Threads has not yet become as accomplished as X. Threads has less than a tenth the number of users as X, according to Time.com.
At first, I thought Musk hadn’t thought through the purchase and rebranding of Twitter. I don’t agree with how he laid off employees and blocked people’s accounts on Twitter just because he could. He seemed to not take into consideration the viewpoints and thoughts of loyal and dedicated users.
Musk seemed to be taking the easy way out. Instead of creating a new app and having to go through federal approval to create this new app, he chose to rebrand the app that he already owns. This is most likely saving some money because he won’t have to create the new app and then promote it.
Elon Musk is a multi-billionaire and owns six major companies including X, SpaceX, Tesla, The Boring Company, Neuralink and Solar City. He has not accomplished this without being a successful entrepreneur. By rebranding Twitter, he forced all the users of the app to accept change and try something new that they might not have tried otherwise.
