I’m genuinely curious about peoples thoughts on this.
It made sense for a while. But the branding change was 16 months ago. The URI change was 3 months ago. Everybody knows now what X is. Yet for some reason, I still see in news stories today:
“… on X — formerly known as Twitter — and said …”
I really don’t think that’s needed anymore. But I’m always one to want changes as fast and painless as possible.
So what do you think would be an appropriate amount of time to keep reminding everyone that Twitter is now X?
Months?
Years?
How many?
Xitter has quite the ring to it.
When I see “Xitter”, I think it might be pronounced Exeter, like the town in southwest England. But that feels like an undeserved slight against the good people of Devon and England.
i pronounce it like Xi, like zhitter, or just shitter
In my headcanon, Twitter users were called twits, so Xitter users are called xits, pronounced appropriately.
No one likes their x
I see what you did there
Until the company is dead
It is happening. If you look for news of, e.g. “Arnold Schwarzenegger endorses Harris”, most outlets just say ‘X’.
In my results, The Guardian, the BBC, The Independent, Fortune, MSNBC, The Washington Post and The Hill just used ‘X’. Politico said ‘on social media’. Only Forbes did the ‘formerly Twitter’ thing.
Hopefully in a year or two they’ll eventually just call it Twitter or maybe if we’re lucky it will go out of business and then they’ll probably still just call it Twitter because the X thing would then have just been a short lived portion of its overall lifespan.
We didn’t stop hearing Prince referred to as “the artist formerly known as Prince” until he changed his name from that symbol back to Prince.
I expect the same for the website formerly known as Twitter.
I dunno. but I wonder if he owns xvideos.
Just call it the X social media site
I think, the main problem is that “X” doesn’t look like a name.
When someone’s not starkly aware of the platform being called that, they might think the author typoed.
Or is using it like the idiom “they posted it to X, Y and Z” (so just a nondescript set of platforms).
Or genuinely means the letter X and that just doesn’t make sense in the context presented.“X, formerly Twitter” is just a better name than “X”, because it is recognizable.
Comcast introduced the “Xfinity” branding in 2010. I still call refer to it as “Comcast”. Any conversation I have where an ISP comes up, the word “Comcast” is used. If someone says “Xfinity”, they often follow it up with “you know, Comcast”.
Now that’s a VERY clear brand change.
The name “X” is a VERY confusing brand change. It will likely be called Twitter forever. In fact at some point Musk will sell or give up on “X” and I guarantee within a year the new owner will change the name back to Twitter.
In that case Comcast is still the company name. Xfinity is just a branding of the consumer services division.
Sure it isn’t a perfect comparison, but the idea is the same.
Hopefully until the platform dies
They really shouldn’t be allowed to name anything after a single letter. VW, BMW, ABC, TBS are all bad enough. X conflicts with too many established uses.
None of those brands you mention are letters. They mean things, and in fact started by being called those things, but people organically shortened their names. Stress on organically. X as a name is trying so hard to sound cool and futuristic that people felt forced to adopt it, and instantly hated it.
I’ll keep calling it twitter as long as musk keeps deadnaming his daughter
So you’ll call it X if he becomes a good parent?
Ha! Fat chance of that happening.
I dunno, maybe.
Which daughter, what’s the source for that?
Edit: I have now been provided with a source, thanks!
Vivian. She publicly denounced him, changed her name, and gave an interview about how horrible musk is as a father. There are many articles written about this, here is just one.
Thanks!
This might not be to anyone’s satisfaction though because it suggests he doesn’t refer to Vivian at all, considering her “dead”, not actually deadnaming her, per se.
I never stopped calling it Twitter and I never will. Just like Facebook will always be Facebook.
It will always be Twitter to me. X is a variable in a math problem… not a company name. Oh, I’m also lazy and have never used Twitter.
