Why Twitter Persists Despite Musk

Elon Musk deeply misunderstands his own social media platform. Rather than seeing it as a community to facilitate, he treats it like a product that requires innovation. His impulsive re-brand to X is a case in point.

It seems to be generally agreed that Elon Musk has made some weird choices since taking over Twitter. His most recent, dropping the globally recognised logo and name and rebrandingj is as “X”. By some estimates this has devalued Twitter’s brand equity by $4 billion; the trademark’s worth had already collapsed an estimated 32% ($5.7 billion) since his takeover last year. Musk’s own brand as a business wizard has taken a substantial hit as well, with Twitter’s revenue having halved since he’s taken the helm. Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson of the Financial Times notes that these numbers imply that Musk “may have trashed an asset worth anything between 9 percent and 45 percent of what he paid for Twitter.”

The loss of the much beloved bird logo, rendering the whole language of Twitter redundant (how does an X tweet?), is only the most recent of a raft of decisions that have aggravated users since Musk officially took over in late 2022. Let’s just look at a few of those:

• He sacked nearly 80% of Twitter’s staff, creating a tsunami of ill-will while undermining Twitter’s capacity to moderate tweets and operate efficiently.