What the X is going on with Twitter? 

Unravelling the transformation into X and unveiling Threads: Instagram’s New Version of Twitter.

Hot off the press, Twitter is no more… over the weekend of the 22^nd – 23^rd July 2023, we all said goodbye to the Twitter we once knew (kind of) as it underwent a rebrand. 

X.com was redirected to twitter.com, where the original logo has been replaced by an X, and on Monday, July 24^th a crane removed the famous little blue bird from the San Francisco headquarters.  

This rebrand has been on the horizon since Elon Musk gained ownership over Twitter in October 2022. When Musk agreed to buy Twitter in April 2022, he explained in the official deal announcement that his plans were to “unlock” the company’s potential by advancing free speech and “defeating the spam bots.” 

Another source stated that Elon Musk acquired Twitter to make a much bigger business, ultimately to create X, which would be used as the ‘everything’ app with the added benefit that half of the global population is already a user. 

Sadly, with this rebrand, we’ve said goodbye to one of the world’s most iconic brand logos… The famous little blue Twitter bird. The logo was designed in 2012 by Todd Waterbury, Martin Grasser and Angy Che.  

Elon Musk, founder and CEO of SpaceX, has been on a mission to rebrand all of his assets to sit under the X name. Why? We don’t know. Musk’s affinity for the letter in both his professional and personal life is easily spotted, however, the reasoning behind this choice has remained a mystery, as Musk has rarely offered an explanation for his fascination with the letter. Notably, “X” has appeared in several aspects of his life, from his early online banking platform, X.com, to the Tesla Model X, and even his son’s nickname is X. 

X vs. Twitter, what sets them apart? 

Well… not much to be honest. As of right now, there are still remnants of X’s previous identity. Posts are still referred to as “tweets,” and the concept of “retweets” remain intact, at least for the time being. Not only that, but the character limit also remains… that is unless you’re subscribed to their Blue Subscription service which will take your 280 characters to a whopping 4000.

Now, we know there’s already a lot going on in the microblogging universe with the Twitter rebrand… but we need to talk about Threads.

If you haven’t heard yet (if that’s the case, where have you been?), Threads is Meta’s new microblogging platform, a competitor to X, and has been dubbed “Twitter killer”. Threads bears a close resemblance to X but there are a couple of differences. Compared to X’s non-subscriber character limit of 280, Threads is offering 500, free of charge. Not only that, but being part of the Meta family, Threads seamlessly interacts with Instagram, easily allowing ‘threads’ to be shared directly to users’ Instagram stories. 

X’s rival is also looking very popular with the public after receiving 5 million sign ups within the first hours of it being launched, making it the most rapidly downloaded app of all time. 

As we bid adieu to the Twitter we once knew and embrace the enigmatic X, we find ourselves on the cusp of an exciting new era in the microblogging universe.