Linda Yaccarino is leaving X

Tangential, I still find it absurd people accept calling it X instead of Twitter. While I'd generally agree that most companies can change their name, encroaching on a basic letter should be off limits, like naming your company "The" or "God".

Still sticking with Twitter until a reasonable name is found, which by Musk is never.

> While I'd generally agree that most companies can change their name, encroaching on a basic letter should be off limits

To me it's the other way around. If the platform had been named X from the start, then a language would have developed around it, including what its messages are called, or what verb is used to refer to posting a message. We, the public, wouldn't have known any better. With Twitter, we do know better — better name, better nouns, better verbs (even a better logo; but that's by the by). Bosses can rename their products as much as they like; it's just surprising to me that we as a public so obligingly give up this tiny bit of our language.

> like naming your company "The" or "God".

Consider truth social :-) I am amazed people agree to call the messages there 'truths', and reposts, 'retruths'. So embarrassing.

The worst part, in my opinion, is that people fell for it. Instead of hearing a split second two syllable "twitter", we now keep hearing "X, formerly known as twitter".

That's 8 syllables. You just gave 4x free advertisement for absolutely no good reason. You're the sucker.

> If the platform had been named X from the start, then a language would have developed around it, including what its messages are called, or what verb is used to refer to posting a message.

I'm not really sure. Some things don't compound, that's why I think a preposition for instance would make a bad name. But even if you may be right, I still want to put up a fight against corporate entities trying to take over basic concepts (X, the unknown, the letter that marks the spot, etc.). I don't want to be forced to use your name if your name is an absurdity, the same way I can't make a brand called "Trump is an idiot" (even if it's true).

I used to Find the renaming a bit ridiculous, but in light of the sweeping platform changes, I find that making the distinction between twitter, the somewhat reasonable microblog platform and x, the far-right psyops operation is useful.

Also there is some honesty in making the logo a half-drawn swastika.

I wonder if the purpose of naming it „X“, just like naming „Facebook“ meta is to do the opposite of SEO: Make it harder to find news pertaining to the company and their scandals.

> like naming your company "The" or "God".

or naming a product "Word" or "Office" or "Windows". :)

> Consider truth social :-) I am amazed people agree to call the messages there 'truths', and reposts, 'retruths'. So embarrassing.

The most Orwellian shit ever.

Microsoft is notorious for naming stuff in a way that makes it impossible to search for information. It is quite annoying.

It sounds like you have a chip on your shoulder.

.NET, lol.

For this reason it's essentially impossible to search for solutions to the many bugs in Windows' Multiple Desktops

"Tweets" was already an embarrassing term. We used to be fine with just "posts" or "comments" instead of trying to put the company branding in every term.

I like to shorten it to ex-twitter. Pun intended of course.

But at least you can search for "Microsoft Office" to counter the issue. Plus, they have the excuse that they have been doing this since before the Web existed, literally.

What do you do with X? "X social"? Ludicrous.

I like to call it X-Twitter.

In a way it is correct, since when spoken it sounds like you're saying ex-twitter.

Same with Facebook / Meta; the "metaverse" they tried to pivot the company to cost them billions and failed spectacularly. Google is still Google, not Alphabet, although separating the overarching org from the search engine / internet services branch was logical. They tried to pivot to social media with Circles, upheaving the whole company. The only good thing that (from an outsider's POV anyway) came out of that was unifying their logins across services.

Microsoft naming makes sense if you imagine that the person that came up with the names was stoned, like high on weed.

"Yo dude, to use the spreadsheets you've got to like excel and stuff. ", "When you make your point it's gotta be powerful. ", "Ain't my point having a database if you can't access it. ", "A: I need a tool to write my book, it's gonna change the world. B: Word bro, word. ", "Bro, you have to connect with people to expand your outlook on life, the world and stuff. ".

Shed Simove actually did this, with some funny results: https://www.shedsimove.com/content/i-changed-my-name-god

I agree but given that the original twitter logo was a bird, It's nice to call it an "Ex Twitter" (Cf. Monty Python's dead parrot sketch)

A UK politician lay down in the House of Commons in order to fill the search indices with "Jacob Rees-Mogg lying"

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/jacob-reesmogg-admi...

Those can be easily identified as "Microsoft Word", "Microsoft Office" and "Microsoft Windows". However "X" is the name of the company and the product.

I guess you could refer to it as "X The Everything App" or using the incredibly corny and near-immediately-binned tagline "X: Blaze Your Glory!" but I've only ever seen those used by people making fun of the product, company, Elon or all three.

How about B, C, C++, C#, D?

Facebook is still called Facebook.

It's interesting how things change. Internet used to be against copyright and for the right to choose how to call oneself. And now it's for copyright and against the self naming thing.

The official newspaper of Russian Communists was also called Truth (Pravda).

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pravda

I'm actually for self-naming in general, it's just that there should be some common sense limits to self-naming. There's a reason why we differentiate between common and proper nouns.