Per a Bluesky post from someone there outside HQ here in SF: "twitter sign change isn’t going well. Building management called cops"
― Ned Raggett, Monday, 24 July 2023 20:00 (ten months ago) link
lol
― Allen (etaeoe), Monday, 24 July 2023 20:00 (ten months ago) link
"You're here to change the sign to an X? Likely story, buddy."
― hardcore technician gimmicks are also another popular choice f (President Keyes), Monday, 24 July 2023 20:01 (ten months ago) link
why would the cops care?
― Allen (etaeoe), Monday, 24 July 2023 20:03 (ten months ago) link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_6cOLJkQlTc
― Josh in Chicago, Monday, 24 July 2023 20:03 (ten months ago) link
Mods, please change the name of this thread to "X". Thank you.
― il lavoro mi rovina la giornata (PBKR), Monday, 24 July 2023 20:07 (ten months ago) link
Since Elon is not paying rent, maybe they are trying to throw him out
― Moritz von Oswald von Wolkenstein (Boring, Maryland), Monday, 24 July 2023 20:10 (ten months ago) link
I hate this app so much. This rebrand is awful. If you need to reach me, you can find me here engaging in content and regularly posting— Amy Gaeta (@GaetaAmy) July 24, 2023
― sean paul akerman (Whiney G. Weingarten), Monday, 24 July 2023 20:10 (ten months ago) link
nailed it
― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Monday, 24 July 2023 20:17 (ten months ago) link
The sign itself is located right on the corner of the building next to a crosswalk, thus:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f4/Twitter%27s_San_Francisco_Headquarters.jpg
What they're doing is taking the lettering off rather than the whole deal, but among other things they were doing they forgot to block off the area right below it where people are walking and, you know, not expecting a big metal letter to come crashing on their head. More here:
https://sfstandard.com/2023/07/24/twitter-sign-being-removed-downtown-san-francisco-office-x/
― Ned Raggett, Monday, 24 July 2023 20:19 (ten months ago) link
An even more bizarre note via Bluesky: "An officer told me twitter’s security team wasn’t notified"
― Ned Raggett, Monday, 24 July 2023 20:25 (ten months ago) link
Okay when your own city's public utilities commission roasts you
Twitter rebranding to X is like when wipes rebranded to "flushable" wipes.— SF Water Power Sewer (@MySFPUC) July 24, 2023
― Ned Raggett, Monday, 24 July 2023 20:30 (ten months ago) link
I’m a little baffled by the outrage, since Musk is overtly, transparently trying to tank the company. Shutting it down abruptly would create a unifying event which could drive users to another site, but this erosion and fuckery is Balkanising the community and dissipating any chance of a rebuild. The mystery is why, and my current guess is its utility as an unregulated news source.
― assert (matttkkkk), Monday, 24 July 2023 20:47 (ten months ago) link
That makes sense but those people will just move to another site and when it gains critical momentum will become the de facto site for unregulated, real time news updates.
― Dan Worsley, Monday, 24 July 2023 20:52 (ten months ago) link
He wanted to change Paypal's name to X a long time again. He's not trying to tank it. It's just his playground.
― hardcore technician gimmicks are also another popular choice f (President Keyes), Monday, 24 July 2023 20:53 (ten months ago) link
xp but the slow, messy death has avoided that because the user base are now scattered across BlueSky, Mastodon, Threads etc. and will not regroup. The systematic violation of the Twitter model means nobody will ever have the same naive belief in checkmarks etc. again, he’s salted the ground after burning the crops.
― assert (matttkkkk), Monday, 24 July 2023 21:03 (ten months ago) link
This was seen in Chicago and a lot of people joked it was a dig at Musk:
https://preview.redd.it/pevxsgdthtdb1.jpg?width=640&crop=smart&auto=webp&s=e95fe616326a303791b78d0c090dcfbdd4f49940
(It was actually for Fragile X Syndrome Awareness Day, so consider me newly aware!)
― Josh in Chicago, Monday, 24 July 2023 21:09 (ten months ago) link
Wait hold on
It appears Instagram and FB owner Meta holds the trademark for "X" as it relates to "online social networking services... social networking services in the fields of entertainment, gaming and application development..." https://t.co/vb2r67ZOzb— Alex Weprin (@alexweprin) July 24, 2023
― Ned Raggett, Monday, 24 July 2023 21:26 (ten months ago) link
That further link is legit BTW!
https://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=87980831&caseType=SERIAL_NO&searchType=statusSearch
― Ned Raggett, Monday, 24 July 2023 21:28 (ten months ago) link
Found this fascinating old article about trademarking a letter:
https://www.fastcompany.com/3042515/wtf-inside-the-wild-weird-world-of-trademarking-the-alphabet
One graf:
Single letters are among the most popular trademarks registered in the United States. Each letter of the alphabet has, at a minimum, hundreds of trademarks. There are, for example, over 2,000 trademarks of the letter S, making it the most popular. There are 1,102 Vs, 1,100 Es, and 1,816 As. Pity the lonely Y, with only 229. For comparison, other common words have far fewer marks: “me” has 97, “cat” has 72, and “extreme” has only 42.
― Josh in Chicago, Monday, 24 July 2023 21:42 (ten months ago) link
reminds me of a moment a few years ago when somebody tried to patent curry powder, because why not
― Andy the Grasshopper, Monday, 24 July 2023 21:47 (ten months ago) link
If Google is Alphabet, don't they own all the letters?
― Muad'Doob (Moodles), Monday, 24 July 2023 21:52 (ten months ago) link
https://i.imgur.com/UFNCjqs.png
― lag∞n, Tuesday, 25 July 2023 02:03 (ten months ago) link
I’m a little baffled by the outrage, since Musk is overtly, transparently trying to tank the company.
― assert (matttkkkk), Monday, July 24, 2023 4:47 PM (five hours ago) bookmarkflaglink
nah hes just very bad at running the company
― lag∞n, Tuesday, 25 July 2023 02:04 (ten months ago) link
When incompetence becomes indistinguishable from sabotage.
― a man often referred to in the news media as the Duke of Saxony (tipsy mothra), Tuesday, 25 July 2023 02:05 (ten months ago) link
truly an alltime business fail
― lag∞n, Tuesday, 25 July 2023 02:09 (ten months ago) link
its too bad hes gonna have to roll back the name change due to ip issues its such a perfect development
― lag∞n, Tuesday, 25 July 2023 02:12 (ten months ago) link
or maybe he refuses to roll it back and it becomes and even bigger snafu
― lag∞n, Tuesday, 25 July 2023 02:14 (ten months ago) link
he should play it hardcore is my suggestion
― Clay, Tuesday, 25 July 2023 02:17 (ten months ago) link
xp You really don't think he has systematically, serially dismantled everything of value about the site? Verification, deplatforming of hate speech, egalitarianism, reach for advertisers, the ability to create one's own community, celebrity and authority direct access ... ? And now burning the brand which has all-but become a category verb in everyday speech, replacing it with something meaningless and impossible to search (as in, "president biden x" will not bring up the was-Twitter account). Firing 90% of the staff, shutting down the media office, not paying rent, violating city codes for employees to sleep in the building, implementing every decision at a speed guaranteed to derail the train?There's dumb and there's deliberate. Like Zuckerberg, Musk is willing and able to offer the public "clownable moments" so they feel superior, while he gets on with doing the things he set out to do with almost no scrutiny beyond "lol Elon fail".
― assert (matttkkkk), Tuesday, 25 July 2023 02:28 (ten months ago) link
i can certainly understand why someone would think hes killing twitter on purpose, and i do think he hates a lot about twitter and is on some level subconsciously trying to destroy it, but if you examine all the moves hes made on an individual level its pretty clear he thinks theyre good and will work
― lag∞n, Tuesday, 25 July 2023 02:32 (ten months ago) link
and obvs he has a lot of ego wrapped up in it which is a big part of why hes fucking up so bad
― lag∞n, Tuesday, 25 July 2023 02:34 (ten months ago) link
yea I think it's less he's playing 3-D chess intentionally trying to kill it and more that all the various stories you read about him being completely incompentent are true
― frogbs, Tuesday, 25 July 2023 02:39 (ten months ago) link
― assert (matttkkkk), Monday, July 24, 2023 10:28 PM
When you group all these actions together, it does look deliberate. But in real time, every single boneheaded move was goaded on by his prominent members of his fanclub. No one's more desperate to be liked by people he approves of than Elon (Trump used to be the same way, but now he only craves ultimate power). The man is far too impulsive and childish to stick to a plan, and considering how directionless his experiment with Twitter has gone so far, I doubt there will ever be one.
― ⓓⓡ (Johnny Fever), Tuesday, 25 July 2023 02:51 (ten months ago) link
theres some stuff where hes trying to take his experience selling things and apply it to a business that sells ads, just very arrogant refusing to learn and so forth, hes clearly kinda lost his marbles
― lag∞n, Tuesday, 25 July 2023 02:53 (ten months ago) link
He’s throwing darts blind hoping to make Twxttxr not a boondoggle.
― papal hotwife (milo z), Tuesday, 25 July 2023 02:53 (ten months ago) link
one thing about people is we refuse to acknowledge when weve got a good thing going and instead keep looking for a good thing
― lag∞n, Tuesday, 25 July 2023 02:56 (ten months ago) link
also worth mentioning that he very publicly made it clear that he did not want to buy Twitter like two weeks after he put in the offer
― frogbs, Tuesday, 25 July 2023 03:00 (ten months ago) link
Which proves he’s good at business
― hardcore technician gimmicks are also another popular choice f (President Keyes), Tuesday, 25 July 2023 03:04 (ten months ago) link
its true that the biggest mistake was offering to buy the company in the first place
― lag∞n, Tuesday, 25 July 2023 03:06 (ten months ago) link
sometimes you stay up all night and get a little weird and you make a $44 bil 420 joke
― Clay, Tuesday, 25 July 2023 03:08 (ten months ago) link
weve all been there
― lag∞n, Tuesday, 25 July 2023 03:09 (ten months ago) link
im honestly having a genuinely negative reaction to the x logo i dont like it i miss the bird
― lag∞n, Tuesday, 25 July 2023 03:13 (ten months ago) link
(its live on the web btw but not the app)
the bird was actually a good logo, there was nothing wrong with it that i could see
― call all destroyer, Tuesday, 25 July 2023 03:14 (ten months ago) link
it was a nice bird it didnt deserve this
― lag∞n, Tuesday, 25 July 2023 03:15 (ten months ago) link
Others have pointed this out, but this renaming is stepping on the exact same rake that got him ousted by PayPal. Wrote about this in my book pic.twitter.com/4yn2KffsHl— Max Chafkin (@chafkin) July 24, 2023
― lag∞n, Tuesday, 25 July 2023 03:25 (ten months ago) link
The bird was a good logo and was also emblematic of a company that however imperfectly thought a lot about design — not just how the site looked, but how smoothly it functioned. I personally hated the whole "tweet" thing at the start, just too fkn cute, but I was won over by how easy it was to use and find interesting people saying interesting things. Musk obviously doesn't care about any of that, the X is a negative logo, crossing out the old one in the crudest way possible.
I don't think there's any great plan driving any of it, I think he really thought running a social media company was going to be easy and he's been flustered by how often he's just splashing around cluelessly. But also I do think he came in with a lot of contempt for the site and the company and the people it had variously empowered. So via whatever path, I think he did instinctively want to disempower a lot of those people (scientists, feminists, LGBTQ, the woke mob) — which he would be doing regardless of how well his overall management scheme was going.
― a man often referred to in the news media as the Duke of Saxony (tipsy mothra), Tuesday, 25 July 2023 04:10 (ten months ago) link
hey look, Belgian/French bank Dexiahttps://www.french.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Dexia-Credit-Local.jpghttps://www.french.org/banks/dexia-credit-local/
― StanM, Tuesday, 25 July 2023 04:51 (ten months ago) link
i don't know why but this X thing has annoyed me more than most of this lackwit's recent fuckery
― Let's talk about local tomatoes (Noodle Vague), Tuesday, 25 July 2023 05:15 (ten months ago) link