Beyond rebranding

Changes in Twitter are destroying value

Twitter’s blue bird has been shooed away. Tweets will now be called “X”s, and Elon Musk’s obsession with the letter “X” has now been cemented into a new brand logo. But this is not a mere logo change. Nor is it limited to a name change. This is much more than a re-branding exercise. Brands have often refreshed their logos to signal a change or improvement in their offerings for their stakeholders, especially the customers. What has happened here is, by all appearances, the first definite step has been taken towards realising Mr Musk’s long-cherished, but so far elusive, dream of an “everything app”, akin to China’s WeChat, which offers services like e-payments and social media under one umbrella. When Mr Musk bought Twitter last year, he had declared as much. If this is indeed the case, then Twitter in the way it is known will cease to exist, not just in name and logo, but also in the very format of its core services.

Twitter has commanded a unique position among the entire host of social media sites. Its geopolitical influence is extensive. Its percolation across the strata of national and regional governments is unparalleled. It has become not only a convenient mouthpiece for opinion makers, but even an extension of their political persona. More than any other social media platform, it is Twitter that pioneered the phenomenon of carefully sculpting, nurturing, and sustaining “social-media personalities”. Thus, Twitter accounts have become an indispensable tool in governance, which leaders of governments at various levels use to not only announce schemes and initiatives, but also shape their political personality daily. Many influential users even use several Twitter accounts to reach specific communities among their followers. Pope Francis, for example, has 53.5 million followers, spread across nine language accounts. Moreover, the interface for “threads” presents a dynamic space for evolving as well as targeted conversations and “sub-conversations”. This is a main reason why it has been widely accepted as a democratised platform for serious socio-political discourses, often directly with top national and global leaders.

This has, however, changed since Mr Musk assumed command last October. University studies and research have shown that Twitter has fared much worse under Mr Musk’s leadership than before. The frequency and kinds of bots went up after his acquisition. Hate speech increased. Transparency norms worsened; in February, he announced that the company would discontinue offering free access to the Twitter API and launch a paid version. Mr Musk has also changed his views on state intervention in online media and even supported requests from governments to take down content. This has, of course, affected the blue brand’s value. Brand Finance, for example, estimates the Twitter brand has lost 32 per cent of its value since last year. In fact, Mr Musk’s latest move to rename and change the logo might have already wiped out $4-20 billion in value, according to analysts and brand agencies. Most importantly, just like “google”, phrases like “tweeting”, “twitterati”, or “twitterpretation” have acquired indispensable linguistic currency. This is what has made Twitter the slate for a unique social language. Thus, even if Mr Musk’s grand plan for an “everything app” doesn’t come to fruition, with X it will be a steeper hill to climb for the firm to re-cultivate the cultural pull and linguistic consensus that Twitter had.