Have you been on Twitter lately? If you haven’t logged into your Twitter account recently, you’re in for quite a few surprises. Elon Musk has been taking drastic decisions ever since he bought Twitter and one of his revolutionary business plans involves renaming the social media app to…wait for it… X.
Musk and his team have now implemented this change and from August 2023, Twitter is officially known as X. Be it the small icon on top of the website or the app icon on your smartphone, the famous blue bird has been replaced by an X imprinted on a black logo.
While this may seem like a simple rebranding exercise, the social network’s evolution from Twitter to X comes with revolutionary changes. Be it the official names for certain features or the process of getting verification badges, X is an entirely different app altogether.
So, as we bid farewell to Twitter and say hello to X, here are all of the big changes that have been implemented on the social media app.
Twitter vs X: What’s different?
1. Rebranding to X
Twitter’s identity had remained unchanged since 2006. However, after Musk’s takeover in 2022, plans were laid out to bring Twitter under another entity, X Corp. These plans have now been executed as the Twitter website and app now bear the new ‘X’ logo. The official Twitter app has also been renamed to X. It even has a new tagline now – ‘Blaze Your Glory!’
The company is also trying to lose all of its previous association with Twitter.
For instance, X Corp’s headquarters bore a giant X logo which also became the centre of another controversy. After several complaints and fines, X took down the illuminated sign from atop its building.
2. X changes familiar terms
The X app also changes some of the terms we had gotten familiar with over the years.
Tweets will now be known as posts and retweets will be known as reposts. The user interface is still the same as Twitter’s but the new X logo is stamped on the masthead of the app and the website.
X will eventually become Elon Musk’s ‘everything app’, wherein its members will be allowed to do much more. Other than micro-blogging, X will also let its users do banking and messaging. Video calling might also be on the cards in the future. Comparisons are being drawn with China’s WeChat, a platform that allows its users to do pretty much anything and everything.
3. Massive company restructuring
Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover began with mass layoffs. The company lost thousands of its employees from around the world including ex-CEO Parag Agarwal who had only spent a short amount of time as CEO after Jack Dorsey stepped down from his role.
Musk initially took over as Twitter’s interim CEO or ‘Chief Twit’ for a few months before handing over the daily operations to former NBC Universal advertising executive Linda Yaccarino earlier this year.
4. X piggybacks on paid subscriptions to survive
Even before it started bearing the new X logo, Twitter, under Elon’s leadership, decided to put all of Twitter’s core features behind a paid subscription model. Initially called Twitter Blue, the X Blue subscription costs USD 8 per month and unlocks a host of features for its subscribers. Here’s a quick rundown of all the X Blue features.
- Editing posts within an hour of posting.
- Seeing 50 per cent fewer ads.
- Prioritised rankings in conversations and search.
- Longer posts that allow up to 25,000 characters instead of the standard 280 characters.
- Formatting texts in posts.
- Bookmark folders.
- Custom app icons.
- Custom navigation bar.
- Spaces Tab.
- Top Articles.
- Option to undo posts.
- Longer video uploads.
- Custom app themes.
- Two-factor authentication via SMS.
Most importantly, the X Blue subscription awards a blue verification badge that was previously available to only prominent personalities on Twitter.
Alternatively, users who don’t subscribe to X Blue have to deal with lots of ads on their timelines. These users also get limited reach in the ‘For You’ tab and they can’t participate in Twitter polls. Legacy blue check holders have also lost their verification badges if they didn’t subscribe to X Blue.
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5. New Twitter logo
As part of the rebranding, Twittter’s iconic blue bird has been replaced by a new ‘X’ icon. The new logo now shows a big ‘X’ stamped on a black backdrop with no reference to the old bird.
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Like most changes that have been implemented under Elon Musk’s leadership, this logo change has also created quite a stir around the world. Twitter’s identity was linked to trusty old ‘Larry’, the iconic bird that had been synonymous with Twitter since 2006. Over the years, Twitter kept updating Larry’s design until it settled on the design revamp that came in 2012.
6. New domain name
Soon after the X rebranding went live, X Corp also activated its new domain name. On Google Search, if you look for ‘X.com’, the page will be redirected to Twitter. Although X continues to use the old ‘Twitter.com’ url, it’s likely that X Corp will make the change to X.com in the near future.
(Hero and Featured Image Credits: Courtesy of Brett Jordan/Unsplash)
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
The new tagline of Twitter is ‘Blaze Your Glory’.
Twitter changed its identity to X Corp after Musk declared his intentions of making Twitter a part of a bigger platform that won't just be limited to networking.
