Elon Musk's purchase of Twitter may soon go through

The Rogue Wolf

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Bedinsis

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Also, why is Twitter going from the immediately recognizable and fitting bird icon, that even people that don't use Twitter like me know, to a generic X? Is there actually any reason that Twitter needed a re-branding? I'm kind of out of the loop.
Most likely explanation is that it's another one of Musk's stupid whims, and it's 𝕏 because he is 15yo and 𝕏 is just so kewl.
Knowing the background, I suspect it is vanity:
(^ thread on the website previously known as Twitter, using a third party website to not force one to log in)
 

Chimpzy

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Knowing the background, I suspect it is vanity:
(^ thread on the website previously known as Twitter, using a third party website to not force one to log in)
True, he's been trying to make 𝕏 a thing for about a quarter century now. Guess he woke up that saturday or sunday, and decided then and there to have another go at 𝕏 (some have noted his most stupid tends to happen on the weekends). Hence probably the very short notice of the rebranding and incredibly hackneyed rollout
 

The Rogue Wolf

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Bedinsis

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So in summary: Not only has he not grown up, he hasn't gotten over being told "no".
Either that, or he figured the website's gonna go down in flames, and if it does he might as well satisfy his vanity.
 

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...Words fail me.

X, formerly Twitter, commandeers '@music' handle from user with half a million followers (msn.com)

User - one Jeremy Vaught - created the handle "music" (leaving out the "commercial at" prefix because the boards think that mean I'm pinging a user) in 2007, and slowly developed into a social media influencer. Content included reviews of consumer hardware which apparently solicited him for those opinions, considering that his reach had hit around half a million followers.

Old Twitter was interested in the handle, but opted against taking it, going for "twittermusic" instead for their purposes.

Musk's Twitter decided it wanted the handle for their own, so took it and gave Vaught the new handle of "musicfan".

...I cannot emphasize enough that you just don't do that to your longtime users/customers because it is so bad for your brand health!

Edit: Missing phrase was making the flow jarring.
 
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Kwak

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...I cannot emphasize enough that you just don't do that to your longtime users/customers because it is so bad for your brand health!
Not if you got other brands apparently.

- Somehow, Vaught remains a Musk fan. He told Ars Technica that he is interested in the billionaire's electric cars and space developments, though someone should tell him that Musk has overstated his level of involvement in the technological developments of both endeavors.



He did it for his new ai thing as well.



- Musk's company also took the handle @Xai from the Japanese user who originally registered the handle back in 2010. On July 12, Musk would go on to officially announce his new artificial intelligence company, xAI. That same day, xAI also launched a Twitter account using the handle @Xai.

"My account was changed without permission," reads an English-language translation of the post that the Japanese user published on X on Wednesday. "It seems that Elon Musk robbed me."

...

Furthermore, it appears the company made another bizarre move in changing the Japanese user's handle from @Xai to @xai_. It seems they also changed another user's handle, the user who originally had @xai_, who is now found at the handle @xai__1. (Note the two underscores in that second user's new handle.)

Mashable confirmed that @xai__1 was previously @xai_ through Brown's Twitter data as well as through a link listed in @xai__1's bio which states that the user's Twitter account can be found at @xai_. The user appears to have not used Twitter since 2015.

So, to make things a bit more clear: It appears that Musk and company wanted @Xai. So, the company changed the original @Xai to @xai_. However, there was already a user with the @xai_ handle so they changed the original @xai_ to @xai__1 and then gave @xai_ to the original @Xai.
 
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Thaluikhain

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Not if you got other brands apparently.

- Somehow, Vaught remains a Musk fan. He told Ars Technica that he is interested in the billionaire's electric cars and space developments, though someone should tell him that Musk has overstated his level of involvement in the technological developments of both endeavors.



He did it for his new ai thing as well.



- Musk's company also took the handle @Xai from the Japanese user who originally registered the handle back in 2010. On July 12, Musk would go on to officially announce his new artificial intelligence company, xAI. That same day, xAI also launched a Twitter account using the handle @Xai.

"My account was changed without permission," reads an English-language translation of the post that the Japanese user published on X on Wednesday. "It seems that Elon Musk robbed me."

...

Furthermore, it appears the company made another bizarre move in changing the Japanese user's handle from @Xai to @xai_. It seems they also changed another user's handle, the user who originally had @xai_, who is now found at the handle @xai__1. (Note the two underscores in that second user's new handle.)

Mashable confirmed that @xai__1 was previously @xai_ through Brown's Twitter data as well as through a link listed in @xai__1's bio which states that the user's Twitter account can be found at @xai_. The user appears to have not used Twitter since 2015.

So, to make things a bit more clear: It appears that Musk and company wanted @Xai. So, the company changed the original @Xai to @xai_. However, there was already a user with the @xai_ handle so they changed the original @xai_ to @xai__1 and then gave @xai_ to the original @Xai.
 

Absent

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For what I had gathered, these are no joke. Musk intends to use twitter as a backbone for something different, bigger, allowing more types of data exchange, integrating an AI, facilitating the monetization of anything, and leaning/influencing to the (societal and financial) extreme-right. A global platform distinct from twitter, modelled around the Chinese wechat, and so with its own name, part of a network of Musk-owned companies all named "x something" (such as x.ai, his artificial intelligence company).

It isn't erratic.
 

Ag3ma

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For what I had gathered, these are no joke. Musk intends to use twitter as a backbone for something different, bigger, allowing more types of data exchange, integrating an AI, facilitating the monetization of anything, and leaning/influencing to the (societal and financial) extreme-right. A global platform distinct from twitter, modelled around the Chinese wechat, and so with its own name, part of a network of Musk-owned companies all named "x something" (such as x.ai, his artificial intelligence company).

It isn't erratic.
The idea of a "WeChat" equivalent is fine, and has the potential to be enormously successful. However, this will require huge sums of money to develop, and Twitter does not have the resources to do this - external funding is required (whether Musk's own billions, or other investors). The jokes about the "X" are that it's a child's ideas of what is cool, and a man so wrapped up in his own ego that he's not paid attention to people's warnings. That's also the root of him being booted as PayPal CEO back in the day: refusing to think anyone else mattered even as he was running his company towards bankruptcy.

In that sense, there might be a grand plan, but Musk himself is erratic and the Twitter debalce demonstrates this writ large: I would have to suggest that plenty of investors may be wary of giving him money.
 
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Thaluikhain

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The idea of a "WeChat" equivalent is fine, and has the potential to be enormously successful. However, this will require huge sums of money to develop, and Twitter does not have the resources to do this - external funding is required (whether Musk's own billions, or other investors).
And people to trust the thing not to be a horrible shambles. Though, he's still got some cultists, I guess.