I'm befuddled: Elon Musk took a well-recognized brand, "Twitter," and replaced it with literally nothing, an "X."
Others share my confusion. In Why Elon Killed the Bird, Charlie Warzel calls the rebrand "nonsensical."[1] "Musk decided to nuke 17 years' worth of brand awareness and rename the thing," he writes. Warzel gives three theories for the rebrand, but none of them are satisfactory.
A business' brand is an intangible asset (its goodwill), which can be worth money.[2] There is no possible justification for nuking a well-recognized brand. One headline sums up the debacle: "Twitter Turning Into X Is Set to Kill Billions in Brand Value."[3]
Also, as one commentator asks, "If Musk had started with $40 billion, or more, in a little over a year, I think he could have gotten a lot further just building something from scratch . . . . If you're really trying to separate yourself from what came before, it really begs the question, what exactly was he buying?"[4]
Another writer agrees: "My first thought is that it’s basically madness to upset the Twitter brand, which is really strong and is what, essentially, you valued at $44bn just a year ago."[5]
Twitter's demise has left wealth advisors searching for a new platform.[6]
I'm still in disbelief that Twitter is now "X." I'm reluctant to change the share icon for Twitter on this website until the dust settles. I also feel sad when I see the "X" logo pop up for Twitter X alerts.
Charlie Warzel, Why Elon Killed the Bird, Atlantic, July 25, 2023 (Apple News link). ↩︎
See Marshall Hargrave, Goodwill (Accounting): What It Is, How It Works, How To Calculate, Investopedia, March 25, 2023. ↩︎
Aisha Counts & Jesse Levine, Twitter Turning Into X Is Set to Kill Billions in Brand Value, Wealth Advisor, July 24, 2023 ("It’s rare for corporate brands to become so intertwined with everyday conversation that they become verbs. It’s rarer still for the owner of such a brand to announce plans to intentionally destroy it."). ↩︎
Brian Wieser, founder of the strategic advisory firm Madison and Wall, quoted in Connor Smith & Adam Clark, Elon Must Explains the Twitter Rebrand. Here's His Goal for X, Barron's, July 25, 2023. ↩︎
Nick Hilton, Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, Twitter to X, Medium, July 25, 2023. ↩︎
See, e.g, Rob Burgess, 30M People Joined Threads Overnight. Will Advisors Get on Board?, Wealth Management, July 6, 2023; Advisors jumping onto Threads could create compliance headaches, investmentnews.com. ↩︎
Hani Sarji
New York lawyer who cares about people, is fascinated by technology, and is writing his first book, Estate of Confusion: New York.
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