Have you heard the news?! Twitter is no more. Well, not exactly. It’s still there, but it has a new name and a new logo. It’s now called X. Yes, just X. And instead of the cute blue bird, it has a black and white X. Sounds cool, right? Well, not everyone thinks so.
In fact, some people think it’s a huge mistake. One of them is Mark Ritson, a marketing columnist who wrote an article titled “12 reasons why Twitter’s rebrand to X is a mistake”. He basically lists all the reasons why changing Twitter’s name and logo is a bad idea for the company and its users. Here are some of his points:
- Rebranding is always a mistake, unless you have to do it for legal or ownership reasons. You lose your brand recognition and loyalty, and you have to start from scratch.
- Twitter has a lot of brand equity, which means that people know and trust it. It was valued at 4.4 billion pounds last year by Brand Finance. That’s a lot of money to throw away.
- The new name X is terrible. It’s already used by many other things, it has negative and dark associations, and it’s weird to say and use.
- Twitter makes money from advertisers, who don’t like mystery and weirdness when it comes to their ads. They want to know what they are getting for their money, and they want to avoid any controversy or risk.
- Twitter is giving up its advantage over Threads, its new rival that was launched by Facebook last year. Threads is now the stable and established platform, while X is the unknown and risky one.
- Twitter’s owner Elon Musk has a vision to turn X into a super-app that can do everything from chatting to shopping to entertainment. But this is not easy or cheap to do, and it’s not clear if people want or need such an app outside of China.
So, what do you think? Do you agree with Ritson that Twitter’s rebrand to X is a mistake? Or do you think that Musk has a genius plan that will make X the next big thing? Let me know in the comments below.