As Twitter destroys its brand by renaming itself X, Mastodon user numbers are again soaring | TechCrunch
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.
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.
I can fathom no world where you'd want to trade away a multi billion dollar brand for a new brand you literally can't SEO. What, you think your brand is gonna be more impressive that the generic variable, and a part of the alphabet?
"Follow me on Twitter" becomes "follow me on X"? "You should tweet that" becomes "you should X that"? The little blue bird on every shop window, website, and business card becomes a stylized letter that, hopefully, doesn't look so threatening on the next iteration?
It's a textbook case of brand destruction. I almost regret never making a Twitter in the first place, just so I could quit today, or at any of the hundred days in the past year where it got inexplicably worse without reason.
They even stole x.org's logo:
A more appropriate rebranding would be 'L'.
This reminds me of the time that the movie XxX came out and it was difficult to find to pirate.
When you name yourself anything with a lot of X's then your search engine results are going to point to adult entertainment over the product
He didn't want to buy the company. So, he's turning it into a pet project. The end. The oxymoron here of this story: The winners of the 44 billion Musk payed for it probably don't care that their creation is being run into the ground while the users of the platform are obviously in an uproar. In the end, the creators and founders, etc. did it for the money, not the cultural impact they would have on the world. Twitter's former CEO has allowed himself to be interviewed from time to time to say what he thinks Musk is doing wrong, but he doesn't seem to have any hurt feelings or express any kind of extreme regrets for the company being sold. From what I've seen in the news, he's pretty dry. The drama comes from the user end. This tells me something about how, in the end, it's just rich people doing business and doing as they please with what they please. It's kind of sad. Like, let's say I made something really cool with my own two hands and my creation got turned into something monstrous. I'd be upset. The people who made twitter are happy with their riches. In the end, the outrage and scandal is kind of pointless because it's just a thing that makes more money for big business rich tech people and it always was just that.
I wonder if they'll renew the twitter.com domain name
Gonna play devil's advocate here.
If Elon is truly able to turn The App Formerly Known As Twitter into an 'everything app' that's actually worth using, this could be a bone-headed move that pays off in dividends. It depends on what he plans to introduce to X within the next year or two. Transforming X into a messaging app won't be enough.
Musk's line of thought here isn't completely asinine. Let's not deny that superapps like LINE, WeChat, Alipay, Taobao and others exist, and absolutely dominate the digital landscape in their own regions.
Problem is, Twitter already has stiff competition. Threads is by far its largest competitor, and the moment Zuckerberg implements hashtags and trending topics, X is going to hemorrhage users.
This is honestly the direction Steve Huffman should've taken with Reddit instead of jacking up API prices and gouging every third-party app out of existence. Imagine if RPAN became a legitimate monetized mobile livestreaming platform instead of some dumb social experiment with seriously limited broadcasting times/broadcasters at once, or if Spez allowed content creators to sell access to premium content á la Tumblr Post+, Fansly, Patreon or OnlyFans. Enough e-girls have been astroturfing the shit out of Reddit to plug their paywalled collection of nudes, so may as well cut out the middle-man and drive OF out of business.
It's like Elon has read every book with an evil corporation in it and decided to make it his whole ascetic. X corp, sounds like the big bad that some plucky band of YA book protagonists have to team up to take down.
Can anyone help explain how to find content worth following on Mastodon? I made an account today and despite going through the #explore category I'm finding it difficult to find content or people I want to follow. The few things I've found end up just being Lemmy communities which kind of defeats the purpose of having a mastadon account at all.. maybe it's because I never had a Twitter, but the Lemmy/reddit/forum layout makes much more sense to me
CalcKey should have been renamed ℂ instead of Firefish. Because.
i never got into twitter, and the longer this goes on, the more glad i am about that
That's a bummer, hang in there Mastodon, keep bloomscrollin
Hopefully a massive influx of Twitter jerks doesn't kill what makes Mastodon a nice place in the first place.
Bad choice after bad choice.
Is that why I've seen more people today wanting to bitch about politics in completely random threads?
I wonder how much x.com cost to purchase, or if it was just a domain twitter/Musk had lying around.
Addiction it is. They think they are advocating for health and social justice. But they're not. They're just addicted to Twitter/X. I mean... it's owned by someone who pays fascists to post on there, but they are still there? WTAF?
Once the celebrities or official pages or figure people leave that site for its dismaying complications, that will be the doom of it as followers of those don't have other significant reasons to stay.
this is sooo complicated
It is, objectively, significantly more complicated, though.
Who knew he was a ZZ Top Fan?
I guess the whole Threads battle making Elon realize he needs to be the data master, and X born earlier than I expected
Um yeah, I'm not seeing that. You can see monthly active users on https://the-federation.info/platform/21 and it's been fluctuating up and down, no big jump. So I call bullshit on that article based on the metric there. Though no doubt as Twitter (X) implodes Mastodon will see the fallout with higher activity.
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To non-tech people the fediverse is pretty damned confusing to be honest. I’m a tech guy and it took me about a week to fully grasp the concept.
To non-tech people the fediverse is pretty damned confusing to be honest. I’m a tech guy and it took me about a week to fully grasp the concept.
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I don't want to rain on your parade but I'll do it anyway: The numbers of active posts and members in Lemmy communities, even in the most active ones, are mindbogglingly low in comparison with Reddit, even in comparison to somethingawful what I still consider the dirty cousin of Reddit.
All the numbers are just two sizes lower than Reddit and then there is the atrocious web interface. I have stopped counting how often my posts got eaten, the reply button didn't react and general stuff didn't work at all.
That actually is a good thing. Less server load, keeps less tech literate people out, and Mastodon still gets exposure.
Not everyone will switch to Mastodon, but that makes it better for those who does.
That actually is a good thing. Less server load, keeps less tech literate people out, and Mastodon still gets exposure.
Not everyone will switch to Mastodon, but that makes it better for those who does.
That actually is a good thing. Less server load, keeps less tech literate people out, and Mastodon still gets exposure.
Not everyone will switch to Mastodon, but that makes it better for those who does.
Twitter hasn’t even rebranded yet and an article like this comes out? Jumping the gun a bit don’t they think?
99% of the people that were leaving twitter when musk took over are still there. They’re too invested to leave. People like Steven King just keep making fools of themselves by still being there 12 months later complaining about how bad Twitter is.
