As Twitter destroys its brand by renaming itself X, Mastodon user numbers are again soaring | TechCrunch

techcrunch.com As Twitter destroys its brand by renaming itself X, Mastodon user numbers are again soaring | TechCrunch

As Twitter ditches its iconic branding in favor of owner Elon Musk's favorite letter "X," its open source competitor Mastodon is once again seeing usage numbers soar.

It's not just lemmy that's benefiting from Elon Musk.

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338 comments

It’s not the rebrand that’s killing Twitter. Elon is. He’s proving to himself that he cannot, in fact, run Twitter better than the prior owners.
- I wonder if previous twitter execs are feeling a bit bad to have sold him twitter to see it destroyed like that.
  I mean it certainly proves Elon is an idiot as he used fraud to manipulate the price and got played instead.
  But was it worth it to let him destroy Twitter just because he tried to defraud it?
  
  They got $44 billion, double what sane people thought the company was worth. It would be irresponsible not to take Elon for a ride.
  
  Responsible financially, as agents of the corporation, sure. And I understand why they did it. Morally though (and I would argue civilly) it was wildly irresponsible. Thousands of people lost their jobs, hundreds of people are now forced to work at Elons insane business under threat of deportation if their visa is invalidated, and hundreds of millions lost a trusted, dependable direct link to governments, public figures, and other notable people. The world is a worse place for having let this deal happen. What is responsible financially is often irresponsible in pretty much every other way, and I wish this perspective was represented more.
  As a shareholder in a number of other large corporations, I would actively like for buy-outs like this one to fail, even if it would make me a quick buck now, even if that quick buck is a lot. I much prefer stability to major erratic changes, even when they benefit me.
  
  hundreds of millions lost a trusted, dependable direct link to governments, public figures, and other notable people.
  It should not have been trusted and pervasive to such an extent. If anything, better to cut the dependency now than later.
  
  That’s a fair argument, and to an extent I agree. That said, I don’t think firebombing something hundreds of millions depend on is not the ideal solution, and it could have been handled differently, like by adding contingencies, for example. Or working in some form of transition period.
  
  In an ideal world, yes. But face it, you, I, and my aunt's puppy knows that'd never happen. Get every govt agency in the world to cooperate? Yeah right. This might have been one of the best ways we could realistically have ended it.
  
  I disagree. Nationalizing Twitter is definitely idealistic thinking, but adding some small contingencies to the deal definitely is not, and is actually pretty standard in large mergers, to maintain stability.
  
  An easy counterpoint to what you just said: mahney. Nobody cares about doing the responsible thing when billions are on the line. Also, a lot of people say they wouldn't do something for a billion dollars which just boils down to "you didn't get a chance like that and you never will". Hypotheticals are easy till it actually happens to you.
  
  I have morals that I will not violate. Money does not matter to me beyond enough to comfortably live on my own (and I have reached that point already). I give the rest away to people in need, because that’s how my moral system works. You’re welcome to think whatever you want about hypotheticals, but in this case it doesn’t matter if they sold or not. The people making this deal would have been obscenely rich either way. At a certain point, money is nothing more than bragging about a big number, your life doesn’t get materially different. If your moral system allows for that kind of action, good for you I suppose, but I can assure you its far from a universal perspective.
  
  Also illegal, since Twitter was a public company- they can't discriminate on bona fide offers or they risk being sued.
  
  As someone who doesnt use twitter... yes this was totally worth it!
  
  I’d be bummed out but happy I have an unlimited supply of hundred dollar bills to wipe away the tears.
  
  I wonder how long twitter would able to run at a loss if elon didn’t take it over as a slapstick joke went wrong.
  
  I’m sure the previous execs are crying into their wads of cash. So much sympathy for them.
  Lol. Like if they gave a shit they would have forced that buyout to go through.
- Yeah. I left with the bluetlicker shitstain bump up in every reply. The dumbest people to ever buy a device and learn English that somehow didn't choke on rocks as a kid...
  Just had enough and had to leave
- To be honest, for me it absolutely was the rebranding that made me delete the app.
  
  Why? I'm really curious what difference the rebranding made to users
  
  Imagine your favourite fancy restaurant suddenly adopts an extreme “Batman” theme. Same food, but just hardcore decorated a la the Dark Knight. You’d probably still go there, but you’d have a different time. And you’d reconsider the types of people you’d bring there, etc.
  Brand is far more than the logo in the top corner, and I think marketing textbooks are going to use Twitter -> X as an example of how not to do things.
  
  Now I'm imagining meeting a professional contact at a classy Italian sit down place, but the waitress greats us with a deep gravely "I'm Batman."
  Thank you for building that moment for me. And yeah, I see exactly your point now. If I hadn't already left X, I would be concerned about sharing a personal and professional brand with it.
  
  For me personally it was simply a gut feeling of how stupid that name and logo looked on my screen. I was of course annoyed but everything else going on before, but that didn’t yet push me away. This is a minor thing, but it was the tipping point.
  
  It's stupid and unnecessary.
  
  If you said it was the final nail in the coffin, sure. But for that to be the only reason?? Why??
  Are you one of those “my brand truck is better than yours because … bowtie” types?
  
  You are jumping into conclusions. See my other answer here https://lemmy.world/comment/2511227

338 comments