X: The controversial end of Twitter

The saga involving the Twitter And Elon Musk is not entirely recent, however, with the end of July, another controversy that left the digital world in boiling state. Elon Musk, known for his adventures in innovative companies such as Tesla, SpaceX or Neuralink, turned his attention to one of the most famous social networks in the world, Twitter, at the end of 2021.

In October 2022, after months of negotiations, speculation and threats of lawsuits, Musk finally acquired Twitter. The completion of this billion-dollar transaction marked the beginning of a new era for the company. Within a few months, the entrepreneur announced a series of controversial changes to the social network, such as the purchase of verified accounts with Twitter Blue and the dismissal of half of the company's staff, which led to major advertisers leaving the platform .

However, the biggest change was still to come: at the end of July, it was announced that the brand Twitter would disappear completely, giving way to X. Musk's vision for the social network is to transform X into a superapp multifunctional, similar to WeChat - Chinese social network, whose features go far beyond messaging or content sharing.

Although it was a sudden change, the first sign of this transformation was given in March, when it was announced that the company Twitter would be renamed X Corp., although the name of the social network remains. Situations like this are not uncommon: in recent years, Google changed its name to Alphabet, while Facebook was renamed Meta. 

In a few days, the famous logo of little blue bird disappeared, the name Twitter became part of memory and X was already in the air. As expected, this change resulted in a series of controversies and users' reactions were mixed: while some admired the change and vision of the entrepreneur, others criticized the total loss of the essence of the social network and the disappearance of an extremely well-known brand - it is important to note that, in just a few months under Musk's management, Twitter lost ⅔ of its market value.

This name change, as mentioned, is not without controversy. To begin with, it seems that all issues related to intellectual property and trademarks were not taken into account. Furthermore, the metamorphosis into a superapp raises legal and ethical concerns related to the privacy of user data. Finally, the integration of several functionalities on a single platform can also raise concerns about diversity and competition in the digital landscape. 

To make this whole situation even more confusing, after this change, the social network started to monetize the posts of subscribers of the X Premium (formerly Twitter Blue), that is, it started paying users for their publications on the social network. This, despite, on the one hand, seeming positive, led to thousands of users starting to publish sensationalist content or even false, with the aim of making gains through the platform, as supervision was also reduced over Musk's management. 

Musk's bold vision to turn X into a superapp may be admirable, however, it appears not to have been very well planned. The name change happened just because the businessman likes the letter/name social network. We just have to watch to see the success (or failure) of X.