Twitter is transforming into X, as the site’s former bird logo has now been replaced by an official new X logo.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.”

  • hellishharlot@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I’ve never been more sure of my decision to move to the fediverse. Y’all still on Twitter should go make a mastodon account

    • brothershamus@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      Is there a recognized excellent guide for non-techy-people-moving-from-twitter-to-mastodon?

      I don’t twit, but I can see how it would still baffle the average user.

      • loobkoob@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        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!

        • brothershamus@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          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.

  • Roundcat@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    And yet every journalist, youtuber, podcaster or creator complaining about it will do everything in their power to find an excuse not to leave.

  • dowath@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    The twitter branding was one of the few things actually going for it. Oh look a cute birdie, oh look the house is a birdhouse! GET IT!

    Now it’s, an X? A meaningless X? With a birdhouse home icon and bird-related words everywhere?

    • muse@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      It looks close enough like a swastika that he can sell merch easier to his fanbase. Armband sales are gonna go through the roof

    • Ragnell@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      He killed the blue canary in the outlet by the light switch. Where is the birdhouse in our soul now?

    • Wxnzxn@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      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.

  • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Couldn’t even pay for the new logo…

    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.

    • Frz@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Uh, what? There’s gotta be some copyright issues with doing this…

      • EnderWi99in@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        How? He’s owned “X” for decades. It was the name of his first company. Dude is obsessed with calling everything X.

          • kirklennon@kbin.social
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            1 year ago

            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.

          • BailOrgana@kbin.social
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            1 year ago

            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.

      • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I mean, a functional company would have made it a legit co tests with terms/Conditions so that they owned every submission or at least the winner.

        Musk probably just sent the tweet and picked a winner, so yeah, they may not own it and if they start using it the creator may be able to sue.

    • ombremad@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      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).

    • Midnitte@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      No doubt infringement issues there - I’ve seen similar existing logos online, not to mention very old ones like X11.

  • roguetrick@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    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.

  • ChaosOnion@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    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.

    • elbowdrop@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      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.

      • brothershamus@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        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.

    • Frz@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      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?

      • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Because he never wanted to buy Twitter

        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

    • ChrisLicht@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      His costs of hiring, retention, RFP-bidding, and regulatory compliance are all going up at his other businesses.

      And, his employees at those other businesses no longer think he’s a genius, which might be worse. Morale is going to be a serious issue.

      Elon will be sent to pasture at all of his investments by the end of the decade. The cost of doing business with him is going to become too high.

  • Staark@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    Musk is one of the biggest cretins I have ever witnessed. Why is he destroying an easily identified, well known brand logo and replacing it with an X?

  • TingoTenga@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    I have a hard time imagining that a letter individually considered, with only minimal stylization, will not have lots of issues for being protected and defended as a trademark.

  • Xeelee@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    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.