• Notnotmike@beehaw.org
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    2 years ago

    This is so wacky it’s astounding.

    You don’t buy a company for their servers or employees, those can be found elsewhere for the same price. You buy a company for its users and its brand. To throw away one of the most icon brands in the world, which is present in the footer of every major website in the world, is baffling.

    What is the end game here?

    • Pagliacci@lemmy.ml
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      2 years ago

      He bought the company to bootstrap his idea of his “X” app which he envisions becoming something like WeChat for the world outside of China.

      I think it’s a terrible idea that’s a solution in search of s problem. WeChat works in China because the government literally enforces it’s usage. The rest of the world isn’t interested in a one-stop-shop for anything and everything.

      It’s the problem of trying to be everything for everyone. You end up with mediocre or bad solutions for many problems instead of great solutions for a couple of problems. It works when there’s no competition, see WeChat, but when there is competition that competition is going to beat you at their game because you’re too busy playing a dozen others.

      • jmp242@sopuli.xyz
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        2 years ago

        The rest of the world isn’t interested in a one-stop-shop for anything and everything.

        I’m not entirely sure this is true. Look at the constant posts and commenting on how people hate to deal with the complication of additional apps / sites. It’s a major negative of the fediverse, it’s one reason I think Signal shot themselves in the foot getting rid of SMS. It’s why people keep using Amazon or Netflix even as they get worse and worse and more expensive. Heck, I’m not even immune - I wish we had one fast and cheap way to transfer money rather than Zelle, Paypal, various bank schemes, venmo and on and on. I wish we had a universal shopping cart thing like Paypal checkout more widely adopted vs making ever more accounts and typing in all my details for a one time order from a different website (and this is one reason why people gravitate to Amazon vs individual sites).

        I’m not saying I’d like an all in one app, but I can see it potentially being interesting to people if it simplified their lives. I don’t think Musk and X are likely to be able to do it, but I don’t actually think there’s no interest.

    • Leafeytea@beehaw.org
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      2 years ago

      Not only wacky but hideous? I mean if you are going to re-logo (forget that it be for idiotic reasons…) the least you could do is make the design look decent… this?? 😂

    • Can-Utility@beehaw.org
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      2 years ago

      At this point it’s foolish not to consider this as possibly the greatest tax writeoff in history. Elmo is setting himself up to never pay another dime in taxes the rest of his life. Not that he probably pays that much as it stands, but still.

      • hh93@lemm.ee
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        2 years ago

        But you won’t save more tax with this that you lost money with it?

        How would this ever make sense especially given that inflation is a thing?

    • Lmaydev@programming.dev
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      2 years ago

      Just to say you often do buy a tech company for it’s employees. But he fired most of them anyway so this move seem pretty on brand.

      • Zorque@kbin.social
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        2 years ago

        I’m sure he has an end-game.

        It’s everything up to that point where he’s completely at a loss.

        • TwilightVulpine@kbin.social
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          2 years ago

          I think his endgame is just boosting his ego. He tried to get this X thing to stick since the PayPal days.

          We are just watching the midlife crisis of a guy with way too much money showing that billionaires are not immune to terminally online brain rot.

    • CodingSquirrel@kbin.social
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      2 years ago

      You don’t buy a company for their servers or employees

      Clearly he didn’t buy it for that either, since he chucked those out the window shortly after purchase. Pretty sure he spent billions of dollars to shitpost and create a safe space for nazis.

    • dismalnow@kbin.social
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      2 years ago

      This isn’t a logo. It’s a cry for help from a severely distressed mind.

      W̸͖͆H̵̡̹̖͂̂̑̅Ǎ̷̲̩͔̿͜͠T̷̩̫͗’̶̺̩͖͚́̚Ś̴̭̺̼̳ ̶̼̱̗̓̄̾H̸̡̗̫̝͘A̵͍̥̔̾P̸͇͎̾́P̵̙̦̀́ͅE̸̢̧̹͐͝͠N̸̫̲͙̘͝I̵̳͍͇̼̾̋̀̕N̶͚͖̪̒̈́̈G̵͕̱̓̃

      ̷̛̰̣̠͛͊ ̸̳̼̹͂ ̸̳͕̳̔̈̉͝ ̸̛̲̋̄͘ ̴͎͐ ̸̝̃̽̚W̵͓̙̏̄̀̉Ḩ̶͚͍͗͠A̷̢̹̥͙͑͐͆T̷̫́̉̄̚’̸̧͍͌͆͜Ş̷̗͚̻̓̉͒͠ ̶̣̯̬͑̈́H̷̘͛̇̚A̷̭͗̓͘P̶̭̠̔͒͝P̵̱̯̲̓͌͘E̵̡̪̣͇̕͝N̵͓͊̇̿̋Ì̷̭̯̠͗̈́͠N̴̬̹̲͔͑̈͝G̵͎̖̥͇̀

    • Very_Bad_Janet@kbin.social
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      2 years ago

      which is present in the footer of every major website in the world

      OMG, I just realize that the little blue bird will be replaced with an X everywhere. A generic looking, forgettable X.

      I also realize that instead of saying “follow me on Twitter” or “I’m on Twitter,” people will say “follow me on X” and “I’m on X,” which sounds like you’re talking about Ecstacy or Molly. Very 1990s club kid. (He’s Gen X so I’m sure he’s well aware of how this sounds.)

      I am seldom a conspiracy theorist but I am really starting to think that he is deliberately trying to destroy Twitter, I mean X.

  • Poob@lemmy.ca
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    2 years ago

    The only reasonable answer is that Musk is intentionally killing Twitter, which is conspiracy theory levels of dumb.

    The only other solution is that the richest person in the world (officially) is this stupid. This is almost harder to believe than a conspiracy to destroy twitter.

    • ConsciousCode@beehaw.org
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      2 years ago

      I wouldn’t say stupid, just narcissistic control freak who can’t stop touching it. That way it doesn’t dismiss him outright. It’s a matter of essentializing language - “someone is stupid” isn’t so dangerous vs “someone does something stupid” lets you recognize the emperor has no clothes but can still be dangerous. Reality is more complex than “xyz is stupid/evil”, and falling into those patterns of thought does a disservice to yourself.

      • Fauxreigner@beehaw.org
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        2 years ago

        I have a suspicion that all of the layers of “Elon management” at Tesla and SpaceX have given him the idea that he’s a brilliant innovator; he gives them all his outlandish ideas and they get filtered into (normally) reasonable plans, and they guide him down the path they want him to go down while he thinks the good idea is his. And those companies are both doing well, so clearly his style works, at least in his mind.

        But then he bought twitter, which didn’t have anyone devoted to protecting the company from him, and it’s all going to shit.

    • Fauxreigner@beehaw.org
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      2 years ago

      The only other solution is that the richest person in the world (officially) is this stupid. This is almost harder to believe than a conspiracy to destroy twitter.

      Why is that hard to believe? The mega-rich are not notably more intelligent than anyone else, they just started decades ago with inherited wealth and got lucky early.

      • Poob@lemmy.ca
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        2 years ago

        Oh this isn’t meant to imply that rich people are smarter than anyone else. More hard to believe in that I don’t want a man with such immense power and wealth to be absolutely stupid. The obvious best choice is no one having a billion dollars.

    • rm_dash_r_star@lemm.ee
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      2 years ago

      Actually after thinking about it, the stuff he’s doing to the company is just batshit insane. It has to be intentional. He’s on a campaign to kill the company for the tax write-off and because he has some kind of personal beef with it. If he were to just fire everyone and shut down the servers he wouldn’t be able to take the write-off. The company has to die a slow death for it to look legit.

    • rm_dash_r_star@lemm.ee
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      2 years ago

      For sure, either he’s destroying it on purpose of he’s that stupid, either one is just way out there.

  • Mereo@lemmy.ca
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    2 years ago

    This is a stupid move. It’s like Google changing its name to something else. Now everyone says “you need to Google this” instead of “you need to search this on the internet”. Twitter has become a recognised brand and tweeting has become a verb in the dictionary. He’s destroying years of work. At this point, we can safely say that his behaviour is not rational.

  • Storksforlegs@beehaw.org
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    2 years ago

    Seeing the care that went into designing the original logo, only to be replaced with… I keep wanting to call it clipart, but clipart is less lazy than this.

  • crow@beehaw.org
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    2 years ago

    This is beyond dumb. Such an iconic logo that was already such a huge part of their brand. Not even a logo that needed to be changed. This will cause major confusion for some old people.

  • Crakila@kbin.social
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    2 years ago

    This is just proverbial middle finger from Elon to the PayPal shareholders because he couldn’t get his way, now he is in a position where he can do this and no shareholder can criticise him for doing so.
    The brand ‘X’ doesn’t have any meaning behind it. ‘M’ maybe so but that would be a stretch.

  • thingsiplay@kbin.social
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    2 years ago

    @mastermind White X on a black background. It couldn’t have less character and personality. The branding wasn’t the issue with Twitter. Let’s recap: Twitter is struggling, Elon buys Twitter, makes it a worse platform for users, introduces authentication by payment, restricts the access to the platform, and then changes the only good thing about Twitter, the branding.