Twitter is transforming into X, as the site’s former bird logo has now been replaced by an official new X logo. Elon Musk, who owns the transformed social media site, began signaling the change early Sunday morning with a series of tweets, starting with one that said, “and soon we shall bid adieu to the twitter brand and, gradually, all the birds.”
Twitter replaced the logo after Musk requested for people to post logo submissions and that “if a good enough X logo is posted tonight, we’ll make go live worldwide tomorrow.” Musk then pinned a tweet featuring a video created by a Twitter user named Sawyer Merritt and changed his own profile photo to the new X logo. Musk did note that the new X logo is an “interim” one, so it could be replaced at a later stage.
Not really; the XOrg logo is clearly designed in two parts, with a break between the two sections. It's absolutely reminiscent of it, though, just different enough that you can't really call it a copy.
US copyright law doesn't allow for protection of something like that. A dingbat, yes, but if it's very plainly recognizable as an X then the exact shape and output of that typeface isn't protectable. You can even print out a font, scan it, and create a new copycat font from it. The only thing you can't do is reproduce the actual typeface file itself, which is fundamentally a single copyrighted piece of software. Some other countries allow more protection on the shapes of individual letters, but I don't think you'd ever win a case anywhere on such a simple geometric shape as this X.
What's even funnier is that anyone pretending to be the creator of the logo is a liar. (It is a scammer's website, after all.)
It's a symbol that's part of the "mathematical alphanumerical symbols" subset of Unicode since ~2001: 𝕏, also known as Mathematical Double-Struck Capital X (U+1D54F).
I don’t understand why everyone tries to make it so hard. Yes, there are alternative apps out there. Yes, there are different servers out there. But is it really an issue if you pick the “wrong” server? Everyone is federated, so you can find whomever you like. If you really enjoy Mastodon you can always migrate to a new server later.
I don't know about guides, but I do agree it can be a little confusing. Trying to work out what instances are and which one you should join is difficult until you understand the concept and a little about how the tech works - it's the same with the threadiverse. Realising it's like email domains is what made it click for me.
And if you personally ever decide to get into Mastodon: you're on kbin already, which federates with Mastodon and has support for microblogging, so you don't even need to do anything new - you just need to start using that functionality on kbin!
Yeah I just know a lot of people who barely understand passwords, and moving to a new platform that isn't exactly the same is going to be a frustrating exercise which ends in them staying on the old platform. It needs to look, act, and feel like twitter in all the ways they're used to for it to carry the largest group of non-savvy users.
And remember they don't read manuals or FAQs or anything, so . . maybe a viral tiktok or youtube something, I dunno.
As has been pointed out elsewhere on the net, the Twitter branding was the most valuable part besides the already existing userbase. Having “tweeting” and as a verb in everyday English has been a godsend marketing specialists can only dream of and it has become so prevalent in news and journalism, it’s both hilarious and depressing.
Elon is really working to make the dream of mainstream Mastodon and a big fediverse a reality.
What, is he trying to ensure his new product is entirely branded as "shit"? I am amazed. Usually you rebrand to get away from something the previous direction was doing. Considering he was still operating on the goodwill from the previous direction while actively tanking the platform, this is astounding.
He scared off a large portion of developers, killed third party clients, destroyed validated users via monetization, let bad actors back onto the platform, and thrown away iconic branding for edge lord bullshit. Manchurian CEO.
It’s not a far stretch to assume that he is tanking twitt…X on purpose. Probably because he is a spoiled brat and someone made fun of him too much on Twitter.
Except that it goes directly against his "give me money because I'm a genius" thing that he's done everything to cultivate. To deliberately attack his standing with SpaceX and Tesla, et. al., by spending 45 Billion to explode a social media juggernaut is beyond insane.
Doubtlessly true, but by the same token I suspect they're running better than ever without Elon around to "help". Their employees certainly seem to think so.
I feel at this point it would’ve made more sense to just build his own social media platform from scratch. What he’s doing is like spending billions to buy a specific used car, only to promptly replace every single part of it and throw the existing parts away. I mean sure, but then why not just buy a new car to begin with?
His plan was likely to act like it, then at the last minute claim some flaw (like too many bots) and that he had reluctantly decided it would be better to make his own.
If it worked he’d hurt Twitter and build up hype for his new social media.
But he’s an idiot, and accidentally committed to buying it
He’s wanted an X company for so long - it feels like something from a teenager desperately trying to be edgy.
He got x.com in 1999, trying to make an online bank. He then bought/merged with a company that was doing an online payment system, envisioning it as part of X, but that got rebranded to PayPal and ended up being spun off separately, ultimately bought by eBay. The online bank thing failed.
I think he’s probably going to try to make Twitter the base for a new online bank thing, but I hope not too many people are dumb enough to trust their money to Musk.
Has anybody considered that Musk could be engaging in a Trading Places style billionaire competition, wherein the players try and trash their multi-billion dollar tech company faster than the others?
Not sure, the other big companies have lots of individual issues and scandals but Twitter is way ahead, and it seems like there is something new every week. Musk must be winning so far.
Buy one of the most recognisable brands on the planet and then just toss it overboard and replace it with something totally bland. Only a true business genius could come up with an idea like that.
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