By Himanshu Arora
Elon Musk rebranding the well-known “blue bird” app into X could mean many things for the world of social media. The theatrical nature of its change, coming off the back of layoffs, restructuring and a shiny new competitor could go either way for Musk.
Twitter is a household name now. It has made its way into regular vocabulary and occupies a big space in the pop culture dictionary of words. Rebranding it to a new name could prove risky for the company. While Facebook too rebranded to Meta only a couple of years ago, it retained its brand name and with it, the brand’s loyal users. With the brand name “Twitter” no longer existing, Musk could be undoing years’ worth of branding and starting from scratch. This looks challenging for an app that is already struggling with ad space and consumer retention. His idea is more or less the same as Meta’s– he aims to make the space all-in-one, focusing on social media, finance and AI. But, it is in execution that this might or might not work out.
The app’s high-level executives have quit, or have been laid off in the past year, citing various reasons. The most prominent one is the problem of hate speech. Brand execs who were in charge of content moderation and brand safety have left, leaving the space vulnerable. That, combined with destabilised internal structures and rocky stock market prices put people on the lookout. Brands are becoming more sceptical about their presence on the platform and the revenue the company is getting through them has only steadily declined. This lack of cash flow from ads has put the company in debt.
In my opinion, when it comes to facing such challenges, familiarity matters. A huge part of stabilising a company that has gone through a sea change in the past few years is to ensure it is still the same app it once was. By changing the name, there is a sense of uncertainty and doubt amongst users on what the future holds.
What the app now needs, is a clear direction for the future. There have been several brands in the past that have rebranded quite successfully and gone in a new direction. In the local context, before GooglePay took over, we had Tez. With a clear branding direction and strategy, Gpay managed to take what Tez had and make it more accessible. I, for one, am interested to see the direction Musk takes to push through the resistance and establish X in the market.
(The author is Himanshu Arora, Co-Founder, Social Panga, and the views expressed in this article are his own)
