Now that Twitter’s gone, do you really want to hang out with an X?
Mark Diamond, ‘hopeful saboteur’ at London-based brand agency Saboteur, discusses the power of brand Twitter, and whether it is really worth forgoing.
The Twitter brand is (or perhaps I should say “was”) an extraordinary asset. As a fellow consultant pointed out to me today, not only does it have near universal awareness and recognition, but it’s even entered the lexicon. You can ‘post’ content to Facebook, TikTok or Telegram. But you can only “tweet” on Twitter.
Brand builders should (and usually do) crave that level of association. “Hoovering”, “Googling” and similar expressions are valuable not only as proof of your brand’s dominance. They also mean consumers will struggle to talk about cleaning their houses or searching online without using your brand name. That’s a lot of word-of-mouth (i.e. ‘free’) promotion, and something you probably wouldn’t give up without a hell of a good reason.
“X”, which Elon Musk has unveiled as the new name for Twitter, is unlikely to enter common parlance in quite the same way. (Telling someone you “X’d” them sounds a little too sinister out loud, and looks a little too flirtatious written down.) So what is the ‘hell of a good reason’ he’s given for abandoning all that brand equity?
The answer, it seems, is his stated ambition to create a “super app”. Commentators have speculated that he has an eye on the likes of China’s WeChat, who combine messaging, social media and mobile payments on a single platform.
On the face of it, the idea of “super app” makes sense. By adding other services to the existing platform, the app gains new ways to monetise its massive user base, and turn a famously loss-making business into a profitable one. On this new mission, the Twitter “brand” is arguably more of a liability than an asset. Users associate it with messaging and nothing else, and convincing them that Twitter is “no longer just a messaging company, but a payments company too” would be an expensive and potentially fruitless task. Better to start with a clean slate, and build a new reputation, without the baggage of a brand that might only ever be partially-relevant at best.
But will users want a “super app”? While WeChat has undoubtedly proved that building a one-stop-digital-shop is possible, they did it in a market without competition from more “specialist” platforms like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. “X” will not be spared this level of competition.
This is a challenge for the business and the brand. Consumers may like the ultra-convenience of a “super app”, but they might still prefer a “specialist’ service that appears more expert, and less likely to join up – and exploit – user data.
It's interesting to note that “Meta” has so far resisted any urge to pull its platforms together under a single “mega app” brand. Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp and now Threads are decidedly separate.
Of course, it is possible that consumers will decide that convenience trumps tailoring, and a “super app” is the way to go. And with Apple now entering financial services in a big way, it’s clear that there’s plenty of belief out there that the right kind of brand can earn people’s trust in more than one category.
But is “X' the right kind of brand? We live in a time of low trust in corporate entities and institutions in general, in which many financial organisations and social media companies are suffering more than most.
Is a company quite literally called “X Corp” the one to persuade us to hand over every last shred of our most sensitive personal information? Is a stark white “X” against a stark black backdrop the image around which we all rally as one social and economic community?
For all the mistargeted ads and objectional content I had to sift through to find what I wanted on Twitter, it always looked, at least, like a well-meaning enterprise. A fun, playful identity with a cutesy bird icon was a permanent reminder of the company’s origins as a Silicon Valley experiment. As long as it still looked like a start-up, or at least like it wanted to be a friendly place to hang out, I could forgive its flaws. Now that image has been torn down, revealing the scale and ambition of the company behind it, and I’m not sure I want to hang out with an X.
