When you buy a business you are buying the brand. This guy is a moron to throw away the most valuable part of his purchase.
this post was submitted on 23 Jul 2023
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One of my favorite examples of a pants-on-head level of branding stupidity was when buy.com was bought out by a japanese company that renamed it Rakuten.com. Most of buy.com’s value was, honestly, in the domain. I know that Rakuten is a large company, but their name is meaningless to the majority of American consumers. I could never even remember whether their name was Ratuken or Rakuten. If I remember correctly (this was about a decade ago), I had used them occasionally for PC parts when they were competitive with places like newegg.
This is so much worse than that. I still think he’s just lashing out in a clinically diagnosable level of narcissistic rage, but I’ve started losing the argument against people who thinks he’s burning down twitter deliberately. Other than locking the doors and shuttering the site, I can’t think of much that he could do that would destroy the company faster.
I am a partisan of the "Elon didn't want to buy twitter, just do a small amount of stock manipulation and now he's running it into the ground to cut his losses" theory, but honestly at this point I'm surprised at how far he'll go and he definitely seems more and more incompetent. Halon's razor also tells me it's incompetence, so I don't know what to think.
I never liked twitter to begin with so I don't really care but yeah it's wierd.
The rich are reducing and removing the ability of the poor to communicate, and more importantly, coordinate.
If that's the case, They're doing a piss poor job of it.
You could have stopped at "this guy is a moron". He has proven the factuality of this statement over and over again at this point.
Exactly. Twitter is a staple in brand design. The platform sucked, but the branding was onpoint.
The Twitter bird is hands down one of the best corporate logos. It's simple and recognizable without any accompanying text. I'd put it at the S-tier with Apple, Nike, and NBC.
A cool little thread from one of the creators of the logo, on how they came up with it
https://twitter.com/martingrasser/status/1683266038602010624?s=20
Considering a lot of his financial backing for the acquisition was from the saudis, and since he already was upset about people making fun of him on Twitter paired with him being an immature manchild kept afloat by generational wealth and public money it makes sense he simply bought the platform to destroy it. The Saudi autocrats didn’t like the free speech issues it caused for them, and Elon just wanted his critics under control the devaluation and destruction are not much of an issue for him.
I'm surprised that anyone is surprised. Elon fucked up making an offer for a company that was way too much. He was forced to buy a company for more than it was worth, and for more money than he had. Who would give him the money to do that except someone who wanted to own the platform for other reasons? And now he's transparently doing everything possible to kill the platform, and everyone is like "Oh wow, Elon is suddenly so bad at business!" He's always been a petulant manchild, but he's not this inept. These are deliberate, calculated choices meant to do exactly what is happening, namely to kill Twitter.
To be perfectly clear Elon has never been exactly good at business.
There's a reason why SpaceX, his most successful company, just treats him like a figurehead and Gwynne Shotwell actually runs things.
Very strong belief is rich = smart and the whole 4d chess excuse.
Considering a lot of his financial backing for the acquisition was from the saudis
Where is this from?
I read it in some articles I don’t remember during the process, but a quick google search turned up this for example:
https://www.newsweek.com/elon-musks-twitter-takeover-faces-backlash-over-saudi-financing-1755606
Interesting. I was unaware of other investment groups gone into coalition to make it happen. I was aware of several banks that are on the hook for $44billion though. All of which will definitely not see that money. Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, Mizuho, Barclays, Societe Generale, and BNP Paribas.
The fact that such massive loans were taken out to make it happen doomed twitter from the start. The interest alone on these loans makes any monetisation strategy impossible. The company was never going to be able to pay it back.
Elon is a genius! He removed the bird, symbolizing the loss of freedom for its user and his company's inability to soar to great heights.
The bird leaving indicates an impeding catastrophe about to hit his company and the new symbol "X" is just as clever, because that's the sign people will click on when they go uninstall the app. Soon, the relationship between Twitter and its users will be nonexistent, just like Musk and his "X" wives
TIL Musk's real name is Vince Gilligan. Bravo Vince!
He says he wants to remove the bird yet he wants to call it Eggs.
Reminds me of a successful local retail business that, several years ago, was bought by a newcomer. In short order, they dropped all the product lines and then changed the name. No one knows or cares about the new place.
If he just wanted to own a social media site, why not just spin up his own? Or buy Truth?
I'm more convinced than ever that one of his main goals has been to ruin twitter for non-conservatives. That's even more important than making it a more useful platform for conservatism.
His Saudi backers have not forgiven or forgotten the Arab Spring.
Oh, absolutely. So essentially the whole purchase is about suppressing speech wealthy people don't like or feel threatened by, and promoting speech they prefer. If they had to choose one or the other, they'd choose just shutting twitter down.
Reminds me of a good working quite successful Taxi-App called „myTaxi“ which was rebranded to „FreeNow“ and everybody was „wtf“? Never used it since then.
In the AppStore the App is still called „FREENOW (ex mytaxi)“.
🤷♂️
If you don’t have other problems, you still can give up your successful, well known brand.
I wonder how well the app is doing today. Is it just a zombie that hasn’t been deleted from the App Store? Or did they rebuild after rebranding?
It was the go-to app to use where I was 2 months ago in Ireland. I thought “Wow, what a terrible name”, and expected the app to be much worse than it was.
I have a parking app (that lets you pay by adding your vehicle's license plate) that rebranded from "parkmobile" to "easypark" so now instead of looking for "P" for "parking" you have to remember to look for "e"... Mind you it infuriated me so much, I do remember...
He spent a lot of money. I don't think he spent it for the concept (because that's straightforward) or the established backend. He bought the users.
He didn't want a platform where he could say what he wants. He wanted a platform where people who are resistant to change have to see what he has to say.
I mean I like xvideos. Maybe xsocial will be good
He's bidding adieu to 'all the birds'. Soon the site will be just like xvideos: male only
xvideos is definitely not male only. At least not the videos I've watched.
xvideos: male only is male only though.
His plan is to tear the company down to the ground and then try to make a new social media site from the ashes with different branding. Maybe something in red.
Even Facebook knew better than to rename Facebook or Instagram to "Meta" on the front-end.
So "setting the bird free" is changed to "getting rid of the bird", got it
I think he's giving us the bird.
OnlyX Blue
What a clown.
Destroying Twitter, and the communication it created, was his goal from the start. The wealthy can't have an open forum they don't control. They're out numbered and the forums themselves tend towards filtering bots and shills. There is no advantage or profit motive in allowing public open communication if you're already wealthy.
He could focus on climate change... Losing all the real birds loser, ya'know.
But that would cost him money AND benefit others. Can't have both. Well, actually can't have the second one, the first one seems to be fine with him.
So does this mean Twitter videos are now X videos?
Because birds aren't real, Elon doesn't believe in them.