🗝️ Farewell, Twitter

Unpacking Twitter's bold transition to X

Author

Kole Ogundipe
July 24, 2023

Hello, Marketers.

Welcome to The Keyword. Where every Monday, Wednesday & Friday we send you a cheat sheet of the latest digital marketing news you can use.

In today’s edition:

  • Twitter's rebrand: Hello, the era of X

  • More must-know headlines

Let’s jump in 🪂

In case you missed us last week:

Monday: Twitter pays cash to Tweeters
Wednesday: TikTok gets into “Social” music streaming
Friday: Round-up of Marketing Social

FEATURE

From Tweets to Transactions: Twitter is now ‘X’

Over the years Elon Musk has talked about a grand vision for X - a kind of super app that is “the central place where all transactions happen”.

Musk used to run a financial services company called X.com before merging it with PayPal. Elon bought back the X.com domain in 2017 for an undisclosed sum.

And now X is making a comeback. But Twitter is just one part of it.

Before the Twitter acquisition Elon tweeted: “Buying Twitter is an accelerant to creating X, the everything app.”

The X concept is modeled on WeChat, the Chinese app that provides over 1 billion users with social networking, shopping, and payment features. Plus a whole lot more.

In June 2022, Musk told staff: “You basically live on WeChat in China. If we can recreate that with Twitter, we’ll be a great success.”

The holding company for Twitter has already been changed from Twitter Inc. to X Corp. Now it’s time for the full rebrand.

That means the famous Twitter bird is out. And a new “minimalist art deco” X logo is the replacement.

The CEO of X, Linda Yaccarino, teased the future of the business:

Just the latest twist in the Elon Musk Twitter tenure.

One thing is certain; his fans will love the move, and his detractors hate it.

Why it matters

Elon has put off many advertisers. But in the long term, apparently, he’d rather do without our marketing dollars anyway.

Instead, he wants X to be mainly monetized through subscriptions and facilitating financial transactions.

HEADLINES

Microsoft Bing copied Google’s ‘Performance Max’ campaign format and released an open beta for advertisers to test. Like Google’s Performance Max, Bing will enable advertisers to run ads across its different ad formats, from one campaign. (Media Post â†—️)

Threads will have separate feeds, taking the tried-and-tested TikTok approach. Threads will separate content into two separate feeds. The first will show posts from accounts users chose to follow, listed chronologically. The second will contain algorithm ‘recommended’ posts, from accounts users do not follow yet. (BBC â†—️)

Apple is testing a ChatGPT-like AI chatbot. Internally called "Apple GPT", Apple is joining OpenAI/Microsoft, Google & Meta by quietly creating it’s own language learning model. Although Siri has stagnated and fallen behind rivals, AI is still a big focus for the world’s most valuable company. (Tech Crunch â†—️)

Google is lining up it’s cookie replacement launch. ‘Privacy Sandbox’ will roll out in Google Chrome’s next update. Privacy Sandbox will still run in parallel with third-party cookies until early 2024. Then cookies will be gradually completely phased out by the second half of 2024. (Tech Crunch â†—️)

Thanks for reading & we’ll be back on Wednesday

Kole