Twitter Rebranded as 'X'

[Fat_Guy]

One thing is for certain, the way he’s going Elon is soon going to be an eX billionaire

I doubt that.



As for that quote of his today that if he speaks his mind he will lose more advertisers - well - he just said he will keep speaking freely and if he loses more money then so be it.


Actually I admire that. Advertisers are mostly vile entities and to say something you don’t want to say for their sake makes you a?


If you are the richest guy in the world and can’t speak your mind then what was the point of it all, especially if your a free speech guy!

 

[MacGizmo]

Suddenly everyone who bailed on Twitter to Threads care about the name change.

I don't think anyone really cares about the name change... they're laughing about it, or crying over all the followers they built up and can't take with them. But in the end, I'm not sure anyone is rooting for Twitter anymore.

 

[stinkhorn9]

I’m a big Musk fan myself, but this is totally bizarre. Brand recognition is so important. To throw 17 years of brand recognition down the gutter for… what??

So that everyone spends ages talking about it? (He can afford to do this for the attention it gives him...)

 

[v0lume4]

So that everyone spends ages talking about it? (He can afford to do this for the attention it gives him...)

Any publicity is good publicity? Or so they say…

 

[TheYayAreaLiving 🎗️]

Not surprised by this at all!

 

[Cunir]

When you look at his plans for X and what he wants it to become then it's not such a weird change. If he leaves it as Twitter then everyone will just carry on seeing it as a social media site. But social media will just be a tiny part of it.

 

[MacGizmo]

When you look at his plans for X and what he wants it to become then it's not such a weird change. If he leaves it as Twitter then everyone will just carry on seeing it as a social media site. But social media will just be a tiny part of it.

What "plans" are those? All Musk and YACKarino have said are that they want it to be an "everything" app that handles discussions, banking, purchasing, and "everything."

That's not a plan, that's an aspiration or a goal.

 

[Cunir]

Haven't they already applied for the licences to handle financial transactions? So it's a plan in motion.

 

[bsolar]

When you look at his plans for X and what he wants it to become then it's not such a weird change. If he leaves it as Twitter then everyone will just carry on seeing it as a social media site. But social media will just be a tiny part of it.

I don't see why. The inspiration is clearly WeChat and so far they didn't feel the need of a rebranding.

I'd also be wary to try the WeChat model without a similar level of government support, which is pretty much impossible in a western country.

 

[ApplesAreSweet&Sour]

hahaha...the idea that this is a well thought out plan is beyond hilarious.

Well, it's an established fact both supported by Musk himself, his fans, and detractors, that he has been striving to create some kind of not exactly well-defined "payment portal meets everything that people do on the Internet"-website called "x.com" for several decades.

And I actually do think this is a plan Musk has been working on for a very long time, at least ever since Peter Thiel (wisely) got him ousted as CEO of PayPal due to Musk insisting on the whole thing being rebranded as "x.com" and turned into an "everything app"-type of website back in the early 2000s.

Mind you, Musk insisted on "x.com" over PayPal despite focus groups proclaiming they didn't like "x.com" because it sounded like something associated to porn to them already back then.

And it's not exactly something that has changed over the years. One could easily argue that we've doubled down on this idea:

That's going to be a tough one to rebrand..!

But whatever happens, I think this is perhaps the most personal and emotional business decision Musk has ever made because of his grudge with not getting his way back in the day -Musk has to get revenge on Thiel and Peter Levchin (another PayPal co-founder). He has to be the one that comes out on top in the end. Doesn't matter to him if Twitter gets destroyed in the process.

x.com has to prevail!

Personally, I think x.com will fail and or at best fizzle out over a long time -There's no obvious vacant space in the market for a hub website/app or replacement for YouTube, Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, etc.

To be fair, "x.com" could have probably worked back in the early 2000s when the Internet was yet to be colonized by the Silicon Valley giga corporations that rule it today. But not now, it's too late.

 

[Solomani]

Not surprising.... didn't Elon name one of his children ÆxFord500i.v8.... or something to that effect? 🤣🤣

 

[Arran]

So that everyone spends ages talking about it? (He can afford to do this for the attention it gives him...)

Not all attention is good.

If he wants consumers to trust him with their financial transactions then his company has to be perceived as stable and trustworthy. Boring even.

This is a long way from that.

 

[Solomani]

Well, it's an established fact both supported by Musk himself, his fans, and detractors, that he has been striving to create some kind of not exactly well-defined "payment portal meets everything that people do on the Internet"-website called "x.com" for several decades.

And I actually do think this is a plan Musk has been working on for a very long time, at least ever since Peter Thiel (wisely) got him ousted as CEO of PayPal due to Musk insisting on the whole thing being rebranded as "x.com" and turned into an "everything app"-type of website back in the early 2000s.

Mind you, Musk insisted on "x.com" over PayPal despite focus groups proclaiming they didn't like "x.com" because it sounded like something associated to porn to them already back then.

And it's not exactly something that has changed over the years. One could easily argue that we've doubled down on this idea:

View attachment 2237474

That's going to be a tough one to rebrand..!

But whatever happens, I think this is perhaps the most personal and emotional business decision Musk has ever made because of his grudge with not getting his way back in the day -Musk has to get revenge on Thiel and Peter Levchin (another PayPal co-founder). He has to be the one that comes out on top in the end. Doesn't matter to him if Twitter gets destroyed in the process.

x.com has to prevail!

Personally, I think x.com will fail and or at best fizzle out over a long time -There's no obvious vacant space in the market for a hub website/app or replacement for YouTube, Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, etc.

To be fair, "x.com" could have probably worked back in the early 2000s when the Internet was yet to be colonized by the Silicon Valley giga corporations that rule it today. But not now, it's too late.

Isn't Meta-Facebook already (more or less) an "everything app" ecosystem? Social media apps, messaging, advertising, and you even have a marketplace, the ability to buy advertised products directly from FB or Instagram app, etc. I think the only thing Meta lacks is an in-house "financial transaction" subsystem.... but that could easily be done by buying out an already existing digital finance/transaction company.... like Square.

Heck, even Apple has been dipping its toes into digital finance/transaction. It started years ago with ApplePay... and then worked its way to an Apple branded credit card, etc. (Altho the Goldman-Sachs partnership is a big setback).


But hey.... I think Samsung has them all beat. Samsung has all those above components, plus Samsung also runs a theme park zoo and a life insurance company. YES, a theme park zoo! They've had it for years. Everland. Google it.

 

[Arran]

I don't see why. The inspiration is clearly WeChat and so far they didn't feel the need of a rebranding.

Exactly! Grow a strong, trusted brand and add more useful services to it. Quietly get those add-ons right. Add more. Earn loyalty. Be solid and trustworthy. Grow your customer base. Once your customers can’t live without you, carefully rebrand to keep them on board. If you even need to rebrand, that is.

Instead, he binned a solid product/brand and is promoting vaporware instead. He publicly laughs at being held accountable, but wants to be trusted with consumers financial transactions and more. Yeah right.

 

[Fat_Guy]

Realize that things we take for granted were “nuts” back in the day with Musk so he has kind of heard it before:


Tesla - electric cars everywhere - are you nuts?


SpaceX - private company going to Mars - are you nuts?


X - global town hall - are you nuts?

 

[webkit]

Your argument for the current quarter is that they were saved by price cuts and tax credits. Previous quarters in 2022 didn't have any of those. Even the carbon credits didn't make up the majority of the profits anymore.

Now you're making the argument that they're in a growth phase so are you really saying any quarter doesn't count no matter how well they do?

No, I was explaining the differing reasons for the various quarter numbers. The recent quarter (which is the one you had originally brought up) was stronger than previous quarters for reasons I've already explained multople times i.e., significant price cuts, additional discounts, models potentially qualifying for $7,500 federal tax credits again, etc.

That marketshare argument is hilarious. Let's do some math.

If you outsold the entire competition cumulatively, you have >50% marketshare. Make sense, right? If you want to maintain 67% of marketshare, you have to outsell all of your competition cumulatively by 2:1. If you want to maintain 75% marketshare, you'd have to outsell 3:1 against all of your competitors. 80% marketshare, 4:1. 83% marketshare, 5:1. See where I'm getting at?

So if Tesla had 67% marketshare and Ford adds 100k capacity/quarter, Tesla would need to add 200k capacity/quarter for every 100k Ford adds just to maintain 67% marketshare. But then, say GM also added 100k capacity quarter at the same time. This means Tesla would need an additional 400k capacity/quarter to maintain 67% marketshare. That means if Ford and GM built 1 factory each, Tesla would need to build 4 factories in the same amount of time. The higher the marketshare you have, the higher the multiple needs to be to maintain the marketshare.

Declining marketshare is to be expected when Tesla had 70+% marketshare in USA IIRC. To say that Tesla is losing their 70% marketshare and therefore Tesla is in trouble is ridiculous.

The target marketshare Tesla wants IIRC is 10%-15% of all cars in the world. Short term goal would be 20 million / year by 2030.

There are many automakers bringing new EV models to market in the coming years. Some analysts (one example below) are predicting Tesla’s EV market share will even drop below 20% within a few years which is significantly lower than it is now.

Tesla's U.S. electric vehicle market share will drop to 18% by 2026, BofA estimates

BofA expects the market to shift significantly from new entrants, such as Tesla, to incumbent automakers.

www.cnbc.com

 

[Kevrani]

I doubt that.



As for that quote of his today that if he speaks his mind he will lose more advertisers - well - he just said he will keep speaking freely and if he loses more money then so be it.


Actually I admire that. Advertisers are mostly vile entities and to say something you don’t want to say for their sake makes you a?


If you are the richest guy in the world and can’t speak your mind then what was the point of it all, especially if your a free speech guy!

He's concerned about his own free speech, not other people's

 

[macsplusmacs]

He's concerned about his own free speech, not other people's

He's really into extortion as well it seems:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1684106327109382146

 

[I7guy]

Not surprised by this at all!

View attachment 2237454

Elon doesn’t care, imo.

No, I was explaining the differing reasons for the various quarter numbers. The recent quarter (which is the one you had originally brought up) was stronger than previous quarters for reasons I've already explained multople times i.e., significant price cuts, additional discounts, models potentially qualifying for $7,500 federal tax credits again, etc.





There are many automakers bringing new EV models to market in the coming years. Some analysts (one example below) are predicting Tesla’s EV market share will even drop below 20% within a few years which is significantly lower than it is now.

Tesla's U.S. electric vehicle market share will drop to 18% by 2026, BofA estimates

BofA expects the market to shift significantly from new entrants, such as Tesla, to incumbent automakers.

www.cnbc.com

We’ll revisit this in 2024 and see how well this aged, or (most likely)not.

It seems don’t bet against Elon.

 

[retta283]

I do find it immensely amusing that the old x.com domain is resurrected in this manner. I used to use it as a redirect to PayPal, think it worked until only about 10 years ago. No one would've imagined. If I fire up one of those old XP machines I may find a bookmark for Twitter.

With regards to the porn, there is perhaps enough porn on Twitter to justify this, after all...

 

[tripsync]

No, I was explaining the differing reasons for the various quarter numbers. The recent quarter (which is the one you had originally brought up) was stronger than previous quarters for reasons I've already explained multople times i.e., significant price cuts, additional discounts, models potentially qualifying for $7,500 federal tax credits again, etc.

Again, your characterization of it seems like Tesla had a bad quarter underneath all the discounts when really Tesla was setup to be able to do price cuts and still have solid margins.

There are many automakers bringing new EV models to market in the coming years. Some analysts (one example below) are predicting Tesla’s EV market share will even drop below 20% within a few years which is significantly lower than it is now.

Tesla's U.S. electric vehicle market share will drop to 18% by 2026, BofA estimates

BofA expects the market to shift significantly from new entrants, such as Tesla, to incumbent automakers.

www.cnbc.com

Analysts thought Tesla would be dead by now.

Tesla Bankruptcy Not So Far Fetched, Says Analyst | OilPrice.com

Just days after Elon Musk’s not-so-well-received April Fool’s tweet that spoke of Tesla’s imminent bankruptcy in jest might not be so foolish after all

oilprice.com

Not sure what the point is.

 

[tripsync]

One thing is for certain, the way he’s going Elon is soon going to be an eX billionaire

meanwhile, two days ago https://www.forbes.com/sites/brianb...musk-reclaims-title-of-worlds-richest-person/

 

[VampyricGentleman]

meanwhile, two days ago https://www.forbes.com/sites/brianb...musk-reclaims-title-of-worlds-richest-person/

But for how long? Not that I care particularly either way to be honest. Twitter never interested me. I set up accounts there, spent a few hours each time and decided it wasn’t for me

 

[tripsync]

But for how long? Not that I care particularly either way to be honest. Twitter never interested me. I set up accounts there, spent a few hours each time and decided it wasn’t for me

You said it was for certain Elon wouldn't be a billionaire anymore with the way he's going.

Elon has been pissing off everyone since 2022 when he took over (and even before that), but since that time, his net worth still increased to the point where he's the richest man in the world, again.

It is not "for certain".

 

[webkit]

We’ll revisit this in 2024 and see how well this aged, or (most likely)not.

The BofA comments were about 2026, not 2024.