Elon Musk, who has spent much of the year in the headlines for his radical transformation of the platform previously known as Twitter, didn't have a great time at a recent Valorant tournament.
10.08.2023 - 20:39 / pcmag.com / Linda Yaccarino / Elon Musk
While Twitter owner Elon Musk is still attracting most of the company-related headlines, CEO Linda Yaccarino insists that she has autonomy to run the company, now known as X.
In an interview with CNBC’s Sara Eisen, Yaccarino said she's involved in "everything" that goes into running the company. Their roles "are very clear,” she said.
"Elon is working on accelerating the rebrand and working on the future and I’m responsible for the rest. Running the company, from partnerships to legal to sales to finance,” she told Eisen.
On that rebrand, Yaccarino said she was aware of the pending change before she joined the company. "Elon has been talking about X, the everything app, for a very long time,” Yaccarino said. “Even when we announced that I was joining the company, I was joining the company to partner with Elon to transform Twitter into X, the everything app.”
Musk has long wanted to resurrect the X brand, which dates back to 1999 and X.com, which eventually became PayPal. (In part because of the letter X's association with adult content.) So it stands to reason that Yaccarino was aware of that, given that we all were. But did she know that Musk was going to announce the rebrand and put it in motion late on a Saturday night via tweet?
Ultimately, Musk appears to want a do-over on X.com, since the plan for Twitter/X is to send and receive payments on the platform, as well as make video calls, amongst other plans.
Besides the name change, Twitter has also moved to compensate users on the platform. The feature is available to Twitter Blue (X Premium?) subscribers with significant engagement with the app. Several of the first payouts went to far-right influencers, but the most recent batch of payouts were delayed, reportedly because the company couldn't keep up with demand.
As part of her appearance on CNBC, Yaccarino encouraged advertisers, many of whom have pulled out from the platform since Musk’s acquisition, to return. She also claimed the company’s trust and safety team is now “healthier” than it was before Musk acquired the company.
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Elon Musk, who has spent much of the year in the headlines for his radical transformation of the platform previously known as Twitter, didn't have a great time at a recent Valorant tournament.
Rebranding exercises are complicated. While the actual name and logo change is the easy part, acclimatizing consumers to the new brand identity is the difficult bit. Recently, we saw Google attempt this when it decided to merge Google Duo with Meet, making them the same app. For months, Google kept both apps available even when it opened in a common interface. Then, it slowly began notifying users about the shift and the eventual merger took place. On the other hand, we have X (formerly Twitter) which completed its entire rebranding process in three days. And a report now reveals that it may have resulted in a hit to the app's download numbers.
It appears that the ‘block' is not the only Twitter (now X) feature whose future is in jeopardy. After expressing his views on how blocking users is pointless and suggesting he may take away this feature, company owner Elon Musk is targetting the headlines on link previews, as per reports. At present, a large number of news organizations share their articles on X. While sharing the articles, the platform generates a link preview that contains the image, URL, headline, and a short summary. But soon, the headline might be gone to reduce the height of the preview window.
Elon Musk made a shocking comment on X (formerly known as Twitter) on Friday when he said that ‘block' as a feature will be deleted on the platform. That means users will not be able to block any other user on the platform, no matter if they spam or troll. The billionaire is known for his dislike of general social networking features, and he has repeatedly expressed his feelings about it. However, getting rid of the blocking feature might not be that easy, even for the owner of one of the largest social media platforms.
In an arresting move that looks like the rest of the signature moves by billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk, iconic Twitter artifacts have been put on the block. Musk is set to auction off an array of intriguing items from Twitter, just weeks after the platform's transformation into "X." This unique auction, entitled "Twitter Rebranding: Online Auction Featuring Memorabilia, Art, Office Assets & More!" is slated to showcase an astounding 584 lots of captivating treasures, including not just the expected office assets, but also coffee tables, remarkable bird cages, and art that once went viral.
Larry The Bird is dead! Billionaire Elon Musk has ensured that by ruthlessly replacing it with the current X logo. However, even as millions of Twitter users (X), mourn its passing, World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), is has used the opportunity in a brilliant way to promote its own agenda - wildlife conservation. WWF Germany has compared the passing of the Twitter bird logo with that of the deaths of countless millions of species on earth due to the changes in the environment wrought by humanity. In reality, the extinction of species that is currently going on at a furious pace has been likened and ccompared to the one that happened during and in the aftermath of the asteroid strike 65 million years ago that caused the demise of the dinosaurs.
Elon Musk has offered to fund legal bills of X Corp. users whose posts or likes on the platform led to discrimination by their employers. The billionaire owner of the social media site formerly known as Twitter said there was “no limit” to the offer, Musk said in a post late Saturday.
X (formerly known as Twitter) has been working hard to make its premium subscription X Blue appear more alluring to boost the subscriber count. Recently, it added features such as unlimited DMs, potential participation in the platform's ad revenue sharing, and access to XPro (TweetDeck). Now, adding to the already long list of benefits, owner Elon Musk announced on Thursday that verified users will also be able to download videos on the microblogging platform. However, there are some restrictions to this feature, which have been likely added to give creators more power.
X owner Elon Musk wrote a long post urging users to support the creators on its social media platform by subscribing to them. The microblogging platform recently added a new feature to support content creators where users can subscribe to an account for bonus content, a ‘subscribed' badge, and even exclusive Spaces interactions. In the post, Musk said that the company has decided not to take any commission from the revenue generated through subscriptions to creators for the first 12 months and thereafter till a $100K payout has been reached. After that, it will only take 10 percent. The billionaire also said that he will speak with Apple CEO Tim Cook about the App Store fee structure to see if it can be adjusted to maximize creator revenue.
Elon Musk's decision to sue a nonprofit critical of Twitter has sparked three Democratic lawmakers to push back on the lawsuit, which they say risks silencing independent research into social media platforms.
Twitter's rebranding exercise is complete and the platform is now known as X. But owner Elon Musk is not done yet. After renaming the social media platform, he is now renaming all the associated assets of the platform as well. Twitter Blue has already become Blue, and there were some reports that tweets can be renamed as ‘posts' after some users briefly saw the name change on the platform on Monday. Now, the latest victim of the renaming exercise is TweetDeck, the dashboard application for managing multiple accounts of the microblogging site. TweetDeck is going to be renamed to XPro, and the new branding has begun appearing in some places, including the top of the landing page.
X's (formerly known as Twitter) rebranding celebrations were cut short after just a week when the giant X logo atop the company's headquarters in San Francisco was seen being removed. The logo, which was erected rapidly after the new brand name and the logo was announced by company owner Elon Musk, had become an eyesore for many local residents and officials who filed complaints with the city, as per a report. With the logo being removed, it is not known whether it will be replaced with a different one or not.