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Manila Bulletin devider Technews devider Rest in peace, Twitter!

Rest in peace, Twitter!

Twitter faces uncertain future with Elon Musk on the helm

Published Jul 25, 2023 01:43 am
Elon Musk's takeover of Twitter would not be complete without realizing his obsession with having a service and or product under this X.com brand (this plan was botched during this PayPal days). Along with the new X CEO barking about X.com being a super-app powered by "AI" to offer Americans a service similar to China's WeChat, they have completely tarnished, and now about to be eradicated, the Twitter brand. I am no marketing or advertising expert, but Twitter is one of the well-known global brands, and it took a decade for it to be up there with the likes of Apple, Google, and, I hate to include it, but Facebook. Very few companies have their products verbified like Google's search (you search by "googling"), and Twitter has "tweet". With X, I don't see this happening. Imagine, what would tweets be called - XS? X-posts? What would Twitter Blue be called - X Blue? Twitter Spaces becomes X Spaces (Spaces X?)? The branding really sucks, and I am not surprised; it's Elon's, after all. In algebra, X usually denotes an unknown. I posted on Mastodon that maybe it dawned on Musk that he does not know what else to do with Twitter to keep it alive for the long haul, hence renames it X - meaning "I don't know what to do with it to keep it afloat anymore". Twitter is on a downward spiral. Yeah, advertisers are spending their money elsewhere (I hope Apple will stop advertising on Twitter, too). This is on top of users' exodus (I have since become inactive on Twitter and shifted to Mastodon and BlueSky). X is the final nail in the coffin for Twitter. It is time to leave Elon Musk's playground. Would companies want to be associated with X? Companies should setup their own Mastodon (yeah, Bluesky's AT Protocol is taking a long time to federate) instances and join the federated universe (fediverse). With their own instance, they have full control of their content - no censorship except when other instance owners do not agree with them, but they still are not prevented from posting. I remember this incident about one "freedom of speech" comment on a certain YouTube account getting banned, but with Mastodon (and all other services on the fediverse), this can't happen. NOW is the time to leave X! Goodbye, Twitter, and thanks for all the tweets!
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