Reacts: Twitter Rebrands To X - Mad Genius or Just Mad?

Yaniv: Sorry, I just vomited in my mouth a little bit.

So, You know, that's, it's pretty bad,

Hi, I'm Yaniv,

Chris: And I'm Chris. We wanted to just do a quick React episode to Elon Musk finally, as promised, renaming Twitter to X, changing the logo to an x, flashing the, new X logo up on the side of the, Titter building, not the Twitter building, the Titter building. and what have you.

It's funny, I actually, used to live around the corner from the two major Twitter buildings, on fourth and Folsom and I lived right there in the Yuba Way lofts for anyone who knows San Francisco. It's a landmark, right? And, first he changes the sign from Twitter to Titter, and now he's flashing up the X logo on the side of the wall, changing all the icons.

I just think this is a breathtaking example of brand destruction. I don't know why you buy one of the most famous brands in the developed world. of a brand synonymous with real time updates, information journalism, celebrity influence, and your first action is to undermine the influencers and celebrities and journalists with the blue check mark debacle.

And your second action is to rebrand the thing, to generic, pointless name, like X. it just, boggles the mind. obviously, we understand his intention to broaden the app and turn it into the Everything app and to add payments and what have you. I mean, that's easily done by.

Calling those features part of Twitter or doing what Meta did, which is to create a holding company, and consider Twitter part of that portfolio. But just renaming the Twitter app, seems like a profoundly stupid, action. Yaniv, what do you reckon?

Yaniv: I mean, look, it, definitely does strike me as profoundly stupid with Elon. there's always a sense of like, is he playing 27 dimensional chess or something here and, Let me first of all read what Linda Yaccarino, the CEO of X, wrote about this change.

She wrote, X is the future state of unlimited interactivity centered in audio, video messaging, payments slash banking, creating a global marketplace for ideas, goods, services, and opportunities powered by AI X will connect us all in ways we're just beginning to imagine. Sorry, I just vomited in my mouth a little bit.

So, You know, that's, it's pretty bad, right? So, that is a wordsalad of just epic bullshit.

Chris: I was about to ask you, Yaniv, did you wanna do that take again? Because I thought you, for real choked.

Yaniv: No, that is, like world class bullshit right there. and so, it is a bit mind boggling The only thing that, if I were to be the devil's advocate here and say, what's going on here? Elon Musk has made it very clear that for a long time, he's wanted to build, he calls it the Everything app, I guess you could say.

If you look at Asia that has these so-called super apps, right? Like WeChat, that are effectively apps that are platforms in themselves that cover like just about everything in your life. You know, WeChat is not a chat platform. I mean it is, but it's also a payment platform and an identity provider and a booking platform and a media consumption experience and a whole lot of other stuff.

And he's wanted to build that. And, I don't think it's smart, but you could say, okay, buying Twitter is, this is his. Beachhead, to build an Everything app, you have to start with something, right? You have a something app, and then you turn that into an Everything app.

And Twitter is a something app that he chose. But then Twitter is a strong brand. and one thing that makes a brand strong is that it has specific associations, right? Twitter is the short messaging or the short broadcast media app, right? 140 characters, 280 characters or whatever. That's what Twitter is, right?

So it's a very valuable brand, but it's also a limiting brand. it's hard to imagine an everything app called Twitter because the associations are too strong, right? Like if McDonald's were like, we are going to be the everything restaurant. We're gonna have Big Macs, but we're also gonna have lobster and fine dining.

You'd be like, you can't keep calling it McDonald's because people know what McDonald's is and it sure as hell isn't lobster and fine dining. So what Elon Musk has done is brand destruction and you know, from a financial point of view, it's insane. Do I think he will be successful with x The Everything app?

No, I don't. But if you accept these premises, that Twitter needs to become the Everything app and that it is a brand that has strong associations that do not align with being an Everything app. Then you have to take that brand behind the woodshed and sacrifice it. And that is I guess, the pro rebrand take I don't really believe, but I think that's what's happening here. it's really a break with the past.

Chris: Yeah. you're right, in, China and, Asia, there is, this tendency for these super apps to be the everything app. In the western world, we have everything apps, they're called iOS and Android. and we leverage the, the platform primitives.

And we use app specific functionality that gets baked into the oss. And you have, widgets and notifications and what have you, and you live in your operating system. And that's, the elegant solution, where you get best of breed solutions that are all baked into a unified operating system and ux.

That's why it works. Right? and as usual, I hear your devil's advocate argument. I know that's what he's trying to do, but as usual, Elon Musk, In the last few years everything with a lack of nuance and a lack of grace. There are ways of achieving what he wants to achieve without the complete value destruction of his brand.

Both personally and Twitter, right? So meta demonstrated this, which is you create a holding company called Meta, and you keep Facebook called Facebook, and you develop a portfolio strategy like Alphabet is doing, right? Google is Google and they're developing a portfolio strategy under that to keep using the meta example. You can create WhatsApp and Instagram and Threads and Oculus and whatever the hell else. And you can create synergies between these apps. You can create a unified identity across them, the meta identity, and you can find your way to an everything portfolio.

And there are really well, well-worn business principles, product principles, branding principles, marketing principles that get there. Or you can just be Elon Musk and you can just poke people in the eye and be a belligerent douche bag. And I don't understand why he's chosen the second path in the last few.

Yaniv: Well are we doing an emergency hot Take podcast on this? Yes, we are. Right. So, you know, in terms of, you could say, all attention is good attention, brand value of X is ramping up pretty fast 'cause everyone is talking about it. What is Elon Musks good at? He's good at getting everyone talking about the things that he does.

And again, I'm trying to provide a counterpoint here.

Chris: Somebody tweeted at him,

Yaniv: You mean Xed at him?

Chris: This is exactly my point. Someone said to him if there were called tweets, what are they called now? And he wrote Xs, and it's just like, shut the hell up. dude. Just go back to building rockets Like again, I'm very, very frustrated by this because I love.

Elon Musk's achievements in rocketry and, autonomous driving and electric vehicles. He has moved society meaningfully forward and accelerated the advent of important changes in our world, important positive changes. And it just, drives me crazy that I also have to hate the guy for just being inelegant, graceless, douche bag.

Why? Why does it have to be that way? why is the world spinning off its axis? I don't understand.

Yaniv: It is strange. And you know, the other thing I guess about this Everything app is that for all of the noise that has happened around Twitter, there has been no meaningful progress since Elon Musk bought. It towards becoming an Everything app. There is no useful payments platform. There is no useful multimedia capability.

There is no everything there. It is still just Twitter in some ways. Meaningfully worse, in most ways, just kind of the same as it was when he bought it. Right? So even if you are gonna make this bold rebrand, at least make a down payment first. Say, okay, you know what, like we've added a whole bunch of really sophisticated payment functionality into Twitter.

It's starting to catch on and we're rebranding to X. But instead you've got your same old, worn out messaging social media platform and you've just rebranded it and it feels us backwards.

Chris: Well, it's worse than that, right? I always talk about Twitter as the, product that its parent company couldn't kill despite its best efforts over the years. The Twitter company has fumbled the ball on the Twitter product over and over and over again. But Twitter as a product and as a network has been so powerful.

It has withstood those efforts to try to kill it. And I have always opened the Twitter app with fondness, even as I shook my head at the Twitter business. Now, when I open the Twitter app, I just feel yucky. I just feel disgusted and I just, like, oh, wait, why did I open? This is from muscle memory.

Like I almost wanna just delete it from my phone. and I'm hoping, against hope that threads or something else will take its place and we can just stop talking about Twitter, once and for all. it's also, and I guess another reason why you can see me visibly frustrated about this subject is Twitter represents almost the beginning of my Silicon Valley journey.

Within a week of landing there, guy who was to become one of my best friends, Ben Metcalf said to me, are you on Twitter? And I'm like, what the hell is Twitter? And we are walking through the San Francisco streets my first night in San Francisco, and he's helping me install Twitter, s m s on my phone.

And I'm like, I don't get this. I don't understand what this is really about, but I'm in Silicon Valley. I'm gonna play along. And it characterized the way that I became enmeshed in that community and South by Southwest. And it was the back channel for My Silicon Valley journey, and I think many of us have that kind of emotional attachment to Twitter.

and presence on the skyline on the street next, to our homes and our offices in San Francisco. it just feels personal. It feels personal that someone can kind of stab it in the heart after all of the punches in the face that it's, tolerated over the years.

So anyway, that's our very visceral reaction to the, rebrand of Twitter to X. Take it for what it's worth. And, let's see what happens next.

Yaniv: Yep. me on X.

Chris: Don't follow me on x screw X, follow me on threads, on Instagram, on LinkedIn, on Facebook. That's where the real action is.

Yaniv: It's funny. Maybe just one other thing to point out I'm not a branding expert, but it seems to me that even if you were to rebrand, X is not a very good name he's always wanted to call this thing X and so he is just gone ahead and done it.

Chris: It was the first domain he had before PayPal. His first company was called X he's had that domain for ages.

Yaniv: So that's our hot take. let us know in the comments if you agree or disagree.

Chris: Absolutely. Look forward to hearing from you guys. See you later.