Goodbye Twitter, Hello ‘X’…
Twitter is now called X, and it’s causing some trouble…
Since launching over 17 years ago, Twitter has been synonymous with their little blue bird. You can understand why it might be a shock then that Elon decided to introduce their rebrand to the mysterious ‘X’, the new owner of the social media platform. Even though you can see the glimpses of the old Twitter remain, the iOS and Android apps have switched over to the new name, including the transition from “tweets” to “posts.”
Why is Twitter called X now?
On July 22, 2023, Twitter, out of the blue, rebranded to ‘X’. According to Elon Musk, the now-owner of the social platform, the name change was to align with it being “the everything app.” Elon says, “This is not simply a company renaming itself but doing the same thing.” We will leave that statement to you to interpret how you will.
So, what does that look like? According to Twitter CEO Linda Yaccarino, “X is the future state of unlimited interactivity — centered in audio, video, messaging, payments/banking — creating a global marketplace for ideas, goods, services, and opportunities.” Now that’s quite the statement ,but it doesn’t look like much has changed on the platform just yet.
Although not much has changed yet aside from a couple of rebranding elements, colour scheme and logo, it has already caused some serious rumbling in the legal department.
Oddly, one of the biggest controversies so far is a giant X logo that (at time of writing) sits atop their company’s headquarters in San Francisco. Local government have stated the sign is in violation of city permits, ouch. According to a report from NPR, multiple inspectors have gone to the building to inspect the sign and have been denied access. Nearby residents have also complained, saying the light is “way too bright.”
Not only this but the logo itself has caused quite a stir. Online debates have already speculated that it’s just a character from Monotype’s Special Alphabets 4 font. Although it’s strikingly similar, Monotype has said that it doesn’t believe the logo came directly from its font.
On top of all this, Twitter is still struggling financially after the bad publicity around the platform since it’s takeover by Elon. According to Musk, around half of Twitter’s advertisers have pulled out of the platform, and there’s still a “heavy debt load” on the company (around $13 billion, according to some reports). User engagement has also declined since January of this year, with traffic dropping around 5% each month.
So, Why ‘X’?
DigitalTrends have done an excellent write up of this so we will let them do the talking…
The pressing reason Twitter is now called X may be the hubris of Elon Musk, but that hubris runs much deeper than a whim. In 1999, Elon Musk founded the original X.com. A year later, it merged with Confinity, which a year after that rebranded to PayPal.
There’s a lot of history here with Elon Musk and X. Reportedly, Confinity (now known as PayPal) was significantly more popular than X was, which is why the merger originally took place. After it happened, Musk returned as CEO, shortly after PayPal’s cofounder Peter Thiel resigned.
According to a report from Fortune in 2007, Musk stirred up a big controversy at PayPal. He wanted to transfer the company’s platform to Microsoft’s operating system and ditch the Unix-based system that PayPal was using. This reportedly led to a “holy war” within the company, leading to Musk being fired as CEO and ousted from the company.
Years later, in 2017, Musk purchased X.com from PayPal for “millions.” At the time, Musk said it was because the name had “great sentimental value” to him. Fast forward another six years and Musk is now putting the domain to work by redirecting it to Twitter.
X copyright controversy
The issues with the X rebrand go far beyond a bright, permit-violating sign and some speculation on fonts. Trademark attorney Josh Gerben told Reuters: “There’s a 100% chance that Twitter is going to get sued over this by somebody.”
According to Gerben, there are nearly 900 active trademark registrations in the U.S. for the letter X that expand to dozens of different industries. The most problematic for Musk is that Microsoft and Meta both have active trademarks for X.
Microsoft has owned the trademark since 2003 as part of the launch of the original Xbox. Similarly, Meta owns a 2019 trademark for an X with a white and blue style. Neither should result in legal issues, Gerben says, unless the X branding ends up much closer to the designs owned by Microsoft and Meta.
The problem, according to trademark attorneys, is how narrow the protections are for a single letter. Douglas Masters, a trademark attorney at Loeb & Loeb, says that “Twitter’s protection is likely to be confined to very similar graphics to their X logo,” meaning that even slight deviations may not infringe on copyright.
