Twitter’s rebrand to X is another negative for the platform
The name and logo change could signal a bleak future for user experience
Elon Musk's Twitter rebrand to X and his plan for the social media site diminishes its unique traits that many users found appealing about the platform. (Claudia Culley)
Since Elon Musk bought Twitter late last year, there have been numerous changes to the platform. The most recent and noteworthy of these changes was renaming the platform to X. Alongside the rebrand, a stylized letter X in black and white replaces Twitter’s famous bird logo.
These changes come after previous advancements to the platform such as verifying accounts with a blue checkmark. Tweets, retweets, and quote tweets have been renamed to posts, reposts, and quotes.
Since Musk bought the platform in late 2022 for $44 billion, his plan for the platform has been to expand it into an app that can do “everything” with unlimited interactivity. As a rough comparison, it could look similar to WeChat, an app originating from China. With WeChat, not only can people message other users, but they can also do other actions such as make payments and share updates about what’s happening.
As someone who started using Twitter around the time Musk bought the platform, looking at all these recent changes is disappointing to see. Musk easily could’ve created a new platform from scratch to put his plans into action. However, it seems like acquiring a massive platform with a lot of users already on it was a lot easier to get people involved with his vision for a platform I will still call Twitter.
I’ve noticed what’s shown in my feed is people who are paid money to post get more traction than those posting reliable content. From my experience, most of these posts are ones that would likely never get this high traction before the change in ownership due to their horrible quality.
Another feature in the Musk-era of the app I find obnoxious is now users can type up to 4,000 characters per post, expanding from the previously set maximum of 280. While I like making long-form content, I don’t go on Twitter to read posts that could basically be an essay.
If what Musk has planned for the platform’s future goes through, it’s likely because there isn’t much else to compete against him and not enough people are willing to experiment with hopping onto a new platform. An alternative platform I would eventually like to get onto is BlueSky, which is similar to Twitter.
As much as I hate where Musk is taking the platform, I’ve made plenty of connections there that would be impossible to replicate on other social media platforms. I’ve met more people in the competitive Pokémon community than anywhere else on social media. I’ve also met other fans of an anime I watch called Oshi no Ko on there and they’ve all been awesome to chat with. These connections are something I’d lose if I no longer use the platform.
Luckily, I’ve managed to connect with a few of them on other social media platforms such as Discord. However, no one I’ve chatted with on Twitter has wanted to try out BlueSky.
I’m hoping what happens with the platform doesn’t get any worse to the point I want to quit being there. I’d end up losing out on a lot more than I thought was possible when I first started using the platform.
