Elon Musk tweeted on his official account on Sunday that Twitter would be changing its logo to an “X” and that all the birds will be disappearing from the platform.
I was part of a “startup” that was all volunteers. We called ourselves Citizens Market, and the idea was to produce an app that let you scan a barcode to get ethical info on the company who made the product.
Like GoodGuide, but they got to market faster.
After a few years of effort, a marketing person joined our all-volunteer team and convinced the head to change the name to Fosfo. Why Fosfo? Because matches have phosphorous in them, and so it referenced illumination, and the illumination had to do with our mission of … you guessed it: providing information.
The thing failed. I mean, we were already failing because we didn’t have the profit motive cutting our decisions down to what worked. But the name “Fosfo” was when I knew the project was dead.
“Citizens Market” was the perfect name for what our app would do. But no, had to have some web 2.0 jackass giving us a facelift. That was our path to salvation: a rebrand.
I'm sure all the brands who are unsure about continuing their advertising on the platform are going to love having to derail their UI teams to go change dozens of different social media icons implementation.
McDonalds Web Team on Friday: "I think we've planned a great sprint for Monday everyone. It'll be tight but we should be ready in time to promote the anniversary of Grimace's bris!"
Only clearer by the day that this was all an exercise to intentionally kill Twitter to the benefit of billionaires, fascists and other extremists.
Twitter existed as a relatively free and open public space to communicate, organize and assemble to take actions for and against things at scale before musk (e.g. The Arab Spring, a terrifying moment for the Saudis especially - the second largest shareholder behind musk).
When people collectively laughed at elon and his cringe, inbred, emerald boy antics or his humiliating divorce and other routine failures, Twitter was the bullhorn.
Now elon and his desperate far right Toadies will work to try to rewrite reality so they can eventually have this conversation:
"Twitter? What's a Twitter? Wait, are you talking about blork? A bird? No, blork's logo is a dinosaur with chainsaw arms... and everyone wants to be his best friend... and it's against the law to divorce him... and he's cool... and..."
What an everlasting tool history will remember you as, elon. If they remember you at all, it will be to laugh at you - you'll never outrun that.
It must be incredibly frustrating to be the new CEO that he just appointed, only to have him continuing to run his mouth and make ruinous decisions that tie your hands.
All I can think of when he talks about how "X will be an app for everything" is:
Welcome to Zombocom, you can do anything at Zombocom, Welcome to you. Anything is possible at Zombocom. The infinite is possible at Zombocom. The unobtainable is unknown at Zombocom. Welcome to Zombocom.