I’m genuinely curious about peoples thoughts on this.

It made sense for a while. But the branding change was 16 months ago. The URI change was 3 months ago. Everybody knows now what X is. Yet for some reason, I still see in news stories today:
“… on X — formerly known as Twitter — and said …”
I really don’t think that’s needed anymore. But I’m always one to want changes as fast and painless as possible.

So what do you think would be an appropriate amount of time to keep reminding everyone that Twitter is now X?
Months?
Years?
How many?

  • Contramuffin@lemmy.world
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    2 hours ago

    Without another name change, I don’t think that phrase will ever go away, for the simple fact that X as a name is too short and nondescript. In speech, X could refer to a someone you broke up with, or it could just be the beginning of another word, serving as a prefix. In text, it could refer to the actual letter itself, or the close button on a window, or a placeholder, or something NSFW.

    There’s simply too many ways that X can be interpreted that even if people associate Twitter with X, people will still specify “formerly Twitter” just to avoid confusion

  • emerald@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    1 hour ago

    I think one of the reasons why we’re still seeing this dome by journalists is because Elon’s takeover is probably relevant to whatever it is they’re reporting. I’ve definitely seen articles just refer to it as “X”. But whenever it’s a story about some crazy racist shit someone said or how poorly their advertising business is doing, it’s “formerly Twitter”.

    That said, I think online people who aren’t writing for news outlets and aren’t insane will — for the most part — always call it Twitter out of spite until the site either dies or Musk sells it and it changes back.

  • jol@discuss.tchncs.de
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    3 hours ago

    I think it will take a whole generation to die off before that happens, because X just isn’t significant enough as a word. You can’t say “I saw it on X” and have people understand you. You can’t say I exed, people still continue saying “I tweeted”. “I posted on X” is simply inferior.

  • ContrarianTrail
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    4 hours ago

    I never stopped calling it Twitter and I never will. Just like Facebook will always be Facebook.

  • njordomir@lemmy.world
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    5 hours ago

    They really shouldn’t be allowed to name anything after a single letter. VW, BMW, ABC, TBS are all bad enough. X conflicts with too many established uses.

    • jol@discuss.tchncs.de
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      2 hours ago

      None of those brands you mention are letters. They mean things, and in fact started by being called those things, but people organically shortened their names. Stress on organically. X as a name is trying so hard to sound cool and futuristic that people felt forced to adopt it, and instantly hated it.

  • BigPotato@lemmy.world
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    6 hours ago

    How long was Prince “The Artist Formerly Known as Prince”?

    Yeah, the rest of his life.

    Twitter probably will have the same laid upon it.

    • Tujio@lemmy.world
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      5 hours ago

      I think it might be this. A lot of traditional media outlets are mad about twitter becoming such a necessity for them. The old guard is mad that they have to cater to this bullshit online platform. The new guard is mad at the fact that the best outlet for breaking online news is suddenly owned and operated by a fascist.

      All of them want to say that x is bullshit, but they don’t want to actually lose the clicks/ market share that comes with it. So they keep passive-aggressively calling it twitter.

      Drunkenly thinking about it, this is kinda like calling a trans person by their dead name. Except it’s insulting a shitty company led by a shithead, so I’m cool with it.

  • snooggums@lemmy.world
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    9 hours ago

    Forever, because X looks like a placeholder and media wants to be clear so they use the name that people actually associate with that trash website. It will never just be X because it is a terrible name for a business.

  • MimicJar@lemmy.world
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    5 hours ago

    Comcast introduced the “Xfinity” branding in 2010. I still call refer to it as “Comcast”. Any conversation I have where an ISP comes up, the word “Comcast” is used. If someone says “Xfinity”, they often follow it up with “you know, Comcast”.

    Now that’s a VERY clear brand change.

    The name “X” is a VERY confusing brand change. It will likely be called Twitter forever. In fact at some point Musk will sell or give up on “X” and I guarantee within a year the new owner will change the name back to Twitter.