There are 26 letters in the English alphabet, but Elon Musk only cares about one letter: X. That’s Twitter’s new name, but the change ran into an unexpected problem. Apple’s App Store platform has an unwritten rule that app names must 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 in the Google Play Store. As you may have heard, the X logo on top of the San Francisco headquarters has been removed.
Anyway, Musk hopes to make X something similar to China’s WeChat, except for the global market. Director Linda Yaccarino describes the objectives for the platform as such:
X is the future state of unlimited interactivity – centered on 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 only just beginning to imagine.
It remains to be seen whether this rebranding is a smart idea or not – after all, Twitter was a household name. Even Google and Facebook kept the names of their most popular products when they reorganized into Alphabet and Meta, respectively. It’s not just about the name of the site/app either; the word “tweet” was in common use, but has now been replaced by the generic “post.”
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