Twitter's 'X' name change has led to a decrease in App Store downloads | Hacker News Reader

Twitter's 'X' name change has led to a decrease in App Store downloads

mashable.com

61 pointsCharlesW28 comments

I suspect the change in icon colour, logo and name is also breaking usage habits that have been built up over the last decade and a half.

I find myself staring at my home screen sometimes, unable to remember what app I wanted to open (Twitter) and not seeing the visual queue I need to remember.

Indeed. You change a bad brand when things are going better. You don’t change a good brand when things are going worse. This was the worst time.

In my mind Twitter is the app for short news, insights, celebs quips, links, and fun exchanges.

In my mind X is the app I click to check if Elon Musk did something stupid in between mountains of bot crypto and onlyfans scams, negative polarized mass of morons shouting at each other and trying to farm engagement for money.

Much like "the artist formerly known as Prince", I have yet to hear a news outlet refer to the thing as anything other than "the company formerly known as Twitter".

Saying "fewer users are downloading X" (or whatever) just sounds like the author forgot to fill in a blank.

It's been several years and we still have to append "actually known as Square" to any mention of "Block". It's one of those glaring signs that the rebrand was a mistake.

Not really the same, Block is the holding company, Square is the product. Just look at squareup.com

Same situation as Alphabet and Google.

In contrast, X is changing all of its branding and slowly removing “Twitter” from everything, slowly but surely. Check out their recent blog posts: they don’t call anything Twitter.

About as useful a rebrand as "the"

Thanks, this made me laugh!

True. "X" seems to get filtered out of searches like a stop word.

You'd think "a word distinctive enough to be a good search term" would be high up on the list of "essential properties for a successful brand". Though somehow a Google search for just "X" does at least have some hits for the brand in question. Vs "twitter", where all of the hits are (still) for the brand formerly known as...

Expected, and this will change as the brand either dies or gains more value.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37203945

Related, 189 comments

That's great news.

The graph in the article does not even cover a full month.

There is a downward swing but that could be a normal change in any given month?

A 6 month to a full year graph would show a better trend..?

Read the article. No other social media app saw the same decline.

[dupe]

Lots of discussion when this was news a week ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37203945

the rebranding was rushed. frankly, twitter was a mess and musk needed to get rid of its tainted name. but that rebranding was rushed, and created an even bigger chaos than before. it's like nothing was learned from facebooks rebranding. both of those could have been executed better.

I don’t see much evidence of the Twitter brand having a tainted name. And it’s laughable to suggest that’s why it was changed. Twitter was a household name, it was the place where people went to talk about stuff. And people knew that about it. X is… for blazing my glory(???)

> And people knew that about it. X is… for blazing my glory(???)

I still can't help reading "blaze your glory" as a barely veiled drug joke.

I read it as a sex joke

It's way more nonsensical than that. It just means absolutely nothing.

I still don’t know why the name. For me, x marks the spot, x can be shorten some words, and in a domain name you better go incognito before opening.

Twitter as a brand wasn’t tainted, but Musk certainly is. Destroying a brand & a platform to build a lesser one is foolish.

I guess you could say I don’t disagree but at the same time Musk is so wealthy that it’s hard to say it’s foolish.

If X shut down entirely Musk’s life wouldn’t change in a material way. Twitter was legitimately “cheap” enough for him that it was an impulse purchase. And of course, it’s not like the wealthy pay cash for such things.

He wanted to own Twitter and remake it in his own image. He got exactly what he wanted.

Submarine guy was wealthy, thus it must be a good idea to build your own dodgy submarine and flatten yourself with it.

Seriously, this “oh, well, he’s rich, so it must be a good idea” thing is an _absolutely deranged_ worldview; I have no idea how people think it is supposed to hold water.

I think you misinterpreted the parent comment and are misattributing a worldview.

What was wrong with the Twitter brand? If it was tainted it’s because of the bad mouthing that Elon started. It was a huge mistake to throw away to brand equity… that alone was worth billions.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com