Twitter changed its name from Musk's obsession.

　　Image source vision china

　　Comprehensive compilation of Ye Yichun and Wang Keming

　　On July 22, elon musk posted an amazing dynamic on his Twitter personal account: "Soon we will bid farewell to the brand Twitter, and then, we will gradually bid farewell to all the bird patterns." Just as everyone was speculating about what he was going to replace Twitter's "Bluebird", he revealed the answer the next day: "If someone makes a good X tonight, we will put it into use around the world tomorrow."

　　Thirty minutes later, a Twitter user posted his minimalist "X" with white characters on a black background. Musk said by forwarding that he was satisfied with this and immediately used it as his account avatar. On July 24th, the Twitter homepage, the official account avatar and the startup page displayed when the website was loaded were all replaced with the "X" in white on a black background.

　　Musk, 52, has been obsessed with the letter "X" for 25 years. As early as 1999, when he started his first business, the online banking service he co-founded was named "X.com" by him. This service later became known as Paypal.

　　Since then, serial entrepreneur Musk has been obsessed with "X.com". In 2002, he founded Space Exploration Technology Company and named it Space X. In 2004, he became the chairman and CEO of Tesla, and launched the Model X model in 2015. In 2017, Musk bought the domain name "X.com" from PayPal, and even tweeted that he had no plans to use it at present, but it was "of high emotional value" to himself.

　　In life, Musk will not give up every opportunity to use this letter. In May 2020, he named his newborn son "XA-12" and took X as a nickname. Due to the violation of the naming law in California, the name was forced to be changed to "XA-XII".

　　What makes the letter "X" so attractive to Musk? Blair Boucher, his former partner and mother of XA-12, explained that X means unknown in mathematics. In a tweet about redefining the Twitter brand, Musk said that he chose to replace Bluebird with "X" because it can "represent the imperfections that make each of us unique".

　　This bold rebranding has brought more unknowns to Twitter's future. Musk once said that he hopes to transform Twitter into a "universal application" similar to WeChat.

　　Musk's decision has many supporters. Zhao Yanhui, a marketing professor in university of nebraska at omaha, told the BBC that rebranding can bring profit returns, especially when a company is in trouble or wants to change its business direction. "Because Twitter has re-positioned its strategy, this rebranding is very necessary." Zhao Yanhui said.

　　But Shuba Srinivasan, a marketing professor at Boston University's Questrom School of Business, warns that when a company is in chaos, its chances of success will decrease. She told the BBC that the transition was a very dangerous move, considering that other social media "competing products" were scrambling to replace Twitter.

　　"Although Musk's vision is to turn' X' into a' universal application', it takes time, money and manpower, and these three things are no longer owned by this company." Mike Proux, research director of Frest Market Consulting Company, believes that Twitter will go out of business or be acquired in the next 12 months.

　　At present, the value of Twitter is only one-third of that when Musk acquired it in October last year. A British brand consultancy recently estimated that the brand value of Twitter was $3.9 billion, which has dropped by 32% since last year. The agency attributed this to Musk's aggressive business strategy.

　　Musk said in late July that Twitter's advertising revenue dropped by half, mainly because big brands were cautious about the changes he promoted. In addition, sudden layoffs and failure to pay bills on time have also led to negative reports and many lawsuits.

　　Will the black and white "X" replacing "Bluebird" make Twitter's prospects better or worse? We can only wait for time to give an answer.

　　Source: China Youth Daily client