The X Factor: Elon Musk's catastrophic misstep in turning Twitter into ‘X’

They say lightning never strikes twice, but apparently Elon Musk’s reckless cavalier business acumen and lack of foresight has hit Twitter (now known as X) once more.

The South African-born billionaire, which bought the social media company in a very contentious deal in 2022, has decided to pluck the blue bird out of social media.

Many have jumped into criticizing the move, pointing out that brand recognition is one of Twitter’s core strengths. After all, you “tweeted out” something, not “x’d” out something.

Musk, who is the most followed profile in the social media platform previously known as Twitter, tweeted (or “x’d”) out logo suggestions.

The minimalistic blue bird has now been replaced with a black and white X, which seems more fitting for an adult entertainment website than a social media platform.

The switch from the blue bird to the white and black X happened over the weekend of July 24, however Variety explains that the 24th letter of the English alphabet has been in Musk’s mind for a while.

X was the original name of the online bank Musk co-founded in 1999 that later became PayPal. He bought the X domain site from his old company in 2017 for “great sentimental value”.

Musk changed the social media company’s name in April 2023 from Twitter Inc. to X Corp., which sounds more fitting to something out of Marvel Comics.

According to The New York Times, the founder of SpaceX wants to turn the app previously known as Twitter into an ‘everything app’ in the mold of China’s WeChat, getting into banking and shopping.

To make things more absurd for Musk, it turns out many of his direct competitors such as Mark Zuckerberg and Microsoft already own the rights of the 24th letter of the alphabet, Reuters points out.

Reuters explains that Meta, the company formerly known as Facebook, owns a federal trademark of the letter “X” in blue and white in fields such as software and social media.

Meanwhile, Microsoft trademarked the letter “X” all the way back in 2003, pertaining to its video game console Xbox.

Of course, X is only one letter in the A to the Z of problems for the social media company formerly known as Twitter.

MSNBC reports that the social media company that Elon Musk owns is worth in at the moment half of the 44 billion US dollars the South African-born billionaire paid originally for it in October 2022.

In a BBC interview in April 2023 Musk revealed he had fired over 80% of Twitter’s employees. He claimed the move was “painful” but it had helped the company to “break even”:

The policy change of the blue checkmark, which went to being used only by personalities, institutions, and other opinion leaders to anyone who can buy it. This drew a lot of criticism and many important users to look into switching to competitors.

Will the X become an example of extraordinary success and exceed expectations of the SpaceX genius extraordinaire, or will just exist as another exorbitant and expensive experiment to be axed in an unceremonious exit?