There are 26 letters in the English alphabet, but Elon Musk cares about only one – X. That’s the new name of Twitter, but the change ran into an unexpected problem. Apple’s App Store platform has an unwritten rule that app names should be at least two characters long.
Apple made an exception for Musk and allowed him to change the name of the app to just “X”, as you can see here:
The app has also been renamed to X on the Google Play Store. However, as you may have already heard, the X logo on top of the company’s San Francisco headquarters has been removed.
Anyway, Musk is hoping to turn X into something similar to China’s WeChat, except for the global market. CEO Linda Yaccarino describes the goals for the platform as such:
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. Powered by AI, X will connect us all in ways we’re just beginning to imagine.
It’s yet to be seen whether this rebranding is a smart idea or not – Twitter was a household name, after all. Even Google and Facebook kept the names of their most popular products when they reorganized into Alphabet and Meta, respectively. It’s not just the site/app name either, the word “tweet” had entered common usage, but it has now been replaced by the generic “post”.
