Consumer Musings

Wow. It’s not that changing the brand from Twitter (and “tweets”) to X (and “x’s”) is a bad business decision. In fact, I doubt it will have any impact at all on both users as well as their business. The business is driven after all by network effects that are really hard to destroy (though Elon sure is trying).

Rather, it is that the rebranding adds zero value, makes zero sense. When Facebook>Meta happened, this was to emphasize a new focus for the company — but it did not change the app it was most known for. Same for Google>Alpha. Those were really meant for their employees, in an attempt to grow business value elsewhere besides what they were known for.

In a similar attempt, Elon is (apparently) trying to turn Twitter into an everything app, ala weChat. As Google and Facebook did, that could have been done without destroying the brand.

Of recent rebrands, the HBO Max > Max rebrand was probably the worst. Similar to the above examples, this was in an attempt to “diversify the brand”. However, in doing so, they also destroyed what they had going for them with HBO (whereas “HBO Max” actually leverages it). And unlike Facebook, Google, and Twitter, HBO doesn’t have the network effects that will cause people to continue to blindly use the service regardless. Whereas more people will look at their next cable or credit card bill and wonder what the hell “max” is.