Frequent readers of the Herald may remember an article from February of this year, in which I discussed Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter and what it meant for the platform. Boy, have things changed since then.

The platform is no longer named “Twitter”, and has instead been rebranded to “X”. Those unfamiliar with the history of Elon Musk may be confused, but as someone who had to read his biography as part of my grade twelve English curriculum, this didn’t completely surprise me. 

Before it merged with Confinity (which operated PayPal) in 2000, Musk was the CEO of a similar payments-focused business named X.com. Both companies were born during the dot-com boom, and focused on the brand new internet financial services sector. After the merger, Musk was not too impressed with the decision to keep PayPal’s branding rather than his own, and it remained a sore spot for him for many years. In 2017, Musk actually came back into possession of the X.com domain when PayPal sold it back to him, and at the time many theorized that he would once again use it for an online business. And he did.

On July 23rd, Musk announced that Twitter would be rebranding to “X” and would use the aforementioned X.com domain. Reaction was, to say the least, mixed. While Musk does have some loyal cheerleaders, most users were not impressed with the rebrand. I was not a fan either, and declared that I would continue to call it Twitter along with the majority of the platform. Twitter has had various financial troubles since Musk’s acquisition with many advertisers threatening to leave, and needlessly destroying billions of dollars of brand equity is hardly a way to start fixing that. The rebrand has made Twitter much more of a generic social media site, exactly the opposite of what Musk has said he’s aiming for. “Tweet” has been replaced with “Post”. “Retweet” has been replaced with “Repost”. Not to mention that the new logo is just an X in the “Special Alphabets 4” font (meaning it can’t be trademarked), and that yes, “X” does kind of sound kind of like a porn site. Not a good look if you’re trying to expand your reach as a social media platform.

While the rebrand is certainly questionable in my view, X did manage to ward off competition from Meta’s new social app this summer, Threads. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced Threads as a direct competitor to, at that time, Twitter; unlike Instagram, the app would have a heavier focus on text interaction. With much fanfare, Threads launched on July 5th and recorded tens of millions of user signups within hours. 

To Meta and Zuckerberg’s credit, the launch of Threads had some great incentives in place to get people to sign up and use the app. Instagram users could easily link their accounts, and once they did, they would immediately start following everyone they followed on Instagram that had already signed up for a Threads account. Over on Instagram, your profile page displayed whether or not you had joined Threads, even displaying what your user number was when you joined. 

Unfortunately, these incentives were also Threads’ undoing in my opinion. The automatic follow feature and the user number display on Instagram encouraged people to join Threads as soon as possible, but not necessarily to post anything once they had. The primary user funnel being Instagram was also a problem; users of a highly image-focused app were slow to adapt to the text-first orientation of Threads and this further discouraged many from posting. Threads has further been hampered by being a fundamentally less complete platform than Twitter; at launch it didn’t even have a website. 

At the time of writing, a few months after Threads’ launch, hardly anyone I know talks about it anymore. As it turns out, even the world’s largest social media company (Meta) can’t overcome the extremely strong network effects of a smaller platform such as Twitter, which brings me to the user base. As I mentioned in February, Twitter has far fewer users than Instagram or Facebook, but those who are on the platform are disproportionately important and influential; think politicians, journalists, and the like. It’s hard to upset Twitter’s dominance over this class of user by releasing a less polished and fundamentally less serious competing experience, which, in my mind, is what Threads is.

Something else that stands out to me between Threads and X is the approach to content moderation. It has been extensively documented how Meta has censored individuals time and time again, including on Threads. While X has made some controversial decisions to police speech in response to requests from foreign governments, such as in Türkiye, Musk, to his credit, has tried to take a more open stance to speech on X. Musk’s stated continued commitment to free speech has at times sparked controversy, with some accusing X of being too permissive towards hate speech. There’s also the issue of disinformation, though X’s Community Notes feature can be an excellent way to slow its spread. Despite these challenges, I’m a firm believer in free speech online and I believe that X’s overall approach is much more desirable than Meta’s, who has repeatedly censored posts on behalf of the US government. 

I’ve been a Twitter/X user for almost eight years, and ultimately, the launch of Threads and the rebranding of Twitter haven’t really changed anything for me. I will still be an avid user of X and I will still refuse to call it anything other than Twitter. The years it will take to fully wash away the Twitter branding is actually a testament to the platform’s reach and importance. Both because of and in spite of Elon Musk’s idiosyncratic decision making, I will continue to use Twitter/X for its unique blend of users and content. It certainly isn’t for everyone, but to be honest, that’s always been the case.