(WBBM NEWSRADIO) — Elon Musk officially rebranded Twitter with a stylized X on Monday, and one social media expert called it a massive mistake.
“I can’t even describe how stupid this is,” said Shelly Palmer, CEO of the Palmer Group and a professor of advanced media at Syracuse University.
Palmer joined the WBBM Noon Business Hour on Monday to offer his honest opinion on the tech company’s rebrand, which he described as “nonsense.”
From a marketing perspective, Palmer said Twitter — and its associated verb, a “tweet” — is a terrible thing to waste.
“Every single adhesive strip is called a Band-Aid,” he said. “Every facial tissue is called a Kleenex. They owned the category, and now they don’t.”
The X started appearing at the top of the desktop version of Twitter on Monday, but the bird was still dominant across the smartphone app.
At Twitter's headquarters in San Francisco, meanwhile, workers were seen removing the iconic bird and logo Monday until police showed up and stopped them because they didn’t have the proper permits and didn’t tape off the sidewalk to keep pedestrians safe if anything fell.
The haphazard erasure of both the physical and virtual remnants of Twitter's past were in many ways typical of the chaotic way Musk has run the company since his reluctant purchase.
“It’s the end of an era, and a clear signal that the Twitter of the past 17 years is gone and not coming back," said Jasmine Enberg, an analyst with Insider Intelligence. "But the writing was on the wall: Musk has been vocal about transforming Twitter into platform X from the start, and Twitter was already a shell of its former self.”
Palmer added that the rebrand also will create some confusion when talking about the app.
“I X’d?” he said. “I guess I’m going to X you later.”
(The Associated Press contributed to this report.)
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