To tweet or to xe? On Sunday, Elon Musk announced that he would change the name of Twitter to “X”. The following day, the iconic blue bird that has symbolized Twitter since 2012 was history. The iconic blue Twitter bird is a thing of the past. Photo: AFP There is no complete agreement on how much the Twitter brand is worth, according to Bloomberg. But the name change is probably expensive. The consulting company Brand Finance has valued Twitter at 4 billion dollars, while Vanderbilt University believes the value has been somewhere between 15 and 20 billion dollars. This corresponds to between NOK 40 and 200 billion. – First of all, I think this seems completely idiotic, says Ståle Lindblad, expert on social media. – Pointless He has followed Twitter and Musk over time and has written several posts about the development on his blog. – There are not many brands that are so well-known that they become verbs, he says, referring to “to tweet”. Photos are already abounding showing that the Twitter logo outside the company’s headquarters in San Francisco is being dismantled. Soon we may see an X where Twitter once stood. Photo: Reuters – Googling is perhaps the only other example. So throwing that brand away is completely pointless. Musk is throwing the baby out with the bathwater and this is another bad decision in an endless stream of bad decisions, continues Lindblad. In comparison, Twitter’s brand value is about the same as Snapchat, but worth less than the Facebook and Instagram brands. Facebook’s brand value is the largest and, according to Brand Finance, is 59 billion dollars. Verdira’s Twitter – or X as it is now called – has plummeted in value since Musk bought the platform for $44 billion last October. The X appears again in many of Musk’s products – Tesla Model X (pictured), SpaceX and the venture into artificial intelligence that he has called xAI. One of Musk’s children is even nicknamed X (full name: X Æ A-XII). Photo: Marcio Jose Sanchez / Ap The platform has also lost about half of its advertising revenue, according to Musk himself. Twitter traffic is said to have also dropped, according to several analysis agencies. – The website has gone from being among the world’s most visited to barely being among the top 50, Lindblad points out. Twitter death Musk has hand-picked Linda Yaccarino to be the new X boss. In a tweet (an x?), she writes that X will become a “website for audio, video, messaging, purchases, payments and banking”. Elon Musk promotes the new brand “X” on his profile. Photo: AFP Some experts believe Musk wants to turn X into something similar to China’s WeChat. The Chinese platform, which is often compared to WhatsApp, combines to a greater extent the buying and selling of services with social interaction. – Musk has long wanted to create an all-possible app with options for buying and selling, Lindblad points out. Wants to create “super app” He explains that Musk’s fascination with X started as early as 1999 when he first launched X.com. This was the precursor to what we know today as PayPal. – He was eventually kicked out by the rest of the team. I think this is some sort of rematch. When he bought Twitter, he saw the opportunity to realize this type of super app, says Lindblad. Another theory is that Musk wants to steer the conversation away from the attention the new app Threads has received. Meta recently launched the Threads app. Many have pointed to it as the best alternative to Twitter. The app is currently not available in Norway. Photo: DADO RUVIC / Reuters Meta is behind Threads. When the app launched in early July, Musk threatened a lawsuit. He accused Meta of copying Twitter. Meta has rejected this. – Twitter’s rebranding is a reminder that it is Elon Musk, not Threads or any other app, that will ultimately bury Twitter, says analyst Jasmine Enberg in Insider Intelligence to CNBC News. Faith in Threads Other Twitter competitors have also received attention recently, such as Mastodon and Bluesky. A woman in San Francisco has lined up in front of the Twitter building wearing a T-shirt with a blue bird to mark her opposition to X. Photo: Reuters Lindblad still has the most faith in Threads. – Of all the Twitter alternatives I’ve tested, Threads is the only one that has awakened the old Twitter feeling, he says and adds: – Also, they have the large user base of Instagram to tap into.
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Think Musk will lose billions when he goes from Twitter to X – news Culture and entertainment
