I’m genuinely curious about peoples thoughts on this.

It made sense for a while. But the branding change was 16 months ago. The URI change was 3 months ago. Everybody knows now what X is. Yet for some reason, I still see in news stories today:
“… on X — formerly known as Twitter — and said …”
I really don’t think that’s needed anymore. But I’m always one to want changes as fast and painless as possible.

So what do you think would be an appropriate amount of time to keep reminding everyone that Twitter is now X?
Months?
Years?
How many?

  • snooggums@lemmy.world
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    18 days ago

    Forever, because X looks like a placeholder and media wants to be clear so they use the name that people actually associate with that trash website. It will never just be X because it is a terrible name for a business.

    • Tujio@lemmy.world
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      18 days ago

      I think it might be this. A lot of traditional media outlets are mad about twitter becoming such a necessity for them. The old guard is mad that they have to cater to this bullshit online platform. The new guard is mad at the fact that the best outlet for breaking online news is suddenly owned and operated by a fascist.

      All of them want to say that x is bullshit, but they don’t want to actually lose the clicks/ market share that comes with it. So they keep passive-aggressively calling it twitter.

      Drunkenly thinking about it, this is kinda like calling a trans person by their dead name. Except it’s insulting a shitty company led by a shithead, so I’m cool with it.

  • Concave1142@lemmy.world
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    18 days ago

    It will always be Twitter to me. X is a variable in a math problem… not a company name. Oh, I’m also lazy and have never used Twitter.

  • Ephera@lemmy.ml
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    18 days ago

    I think, the main problem is that “X” doesn’t look like a name.

    When someone’s not starkly aware of the platform being called that, they might think the author typoed.
    Or is using it like the idiom “they posted it to X, Y and Z” (so just a nondescript set of platforms).
    Or genuinely means the letter X and that just doesn’t make sense in the context presented.

    “X, formerly Twitter” is just a better name than “X”, because it is recognizable.

  • Mandy@sh.itjust.works
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    18 days ago

    Everyone collectively agreed x is stupid and I hope spite will make sure this sentiment never changes

    • sho@ani.social
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      18 days ago

      Almost as stupid as facebook creating a platform called threads. Zero creativity, and maxium collaboration inconvience with our language usage, plus facebook trying to stick their nose in fediverse where the whole point was to get away from their centralized metaverse BS. Facebook can fuck off.

  • Contramuffin@lemmy.world
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    18 days ago

    Without another name change, I don’t think that phrase will ever go away, for the simple fact that X as a name is too short and nondescript. In speech, X could refer to a someone you broke up with, or it could just be the beginning of another word, serving as a prefix. In text, it could refer to the actual letter itself, or the close button on a window, or a placeholder, or something NSFW.

    There’s simply too many ways that X can be interpreted that even if people associate Twitter with X, people will still specify “formerly Twitter” just to avoid confusion

  • BigPotato@lemmy.world
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    18 days ago

    How long was Prince “The Artist Formerly Known as Prince”?

    Yeah, the rest of his life.

    Twitter probably will have the same laid upon it.

    • CoggyMcFee@lemmy.world
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      18 days ago

      How long was Prince “The Artist Formerly Known as Prince”?

      For about seven years, and then he went back to calling himself Prince again.

    • Steve@communick.newsOP
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      18 days ago

      Prince changed his name to a literally unpronounceable logo. So in that case, there was no real other option.

      • BigPotato@lemmy.world
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        18 days ago

        If we say that the accepted pronunciation of “X” is “ex” then we run into an even bigger problem than Prince’s logo.

        “Ex” User says… Is this a former user of the website or current?

        A user on the website “ex” is too long winded and sounds like I’m saying a hypothetical.

        Users on “ex” - although shorter, X is a street name for ecstacy and user is sometimes used as shorthand for drug user (e.g. User and abuser) so why should we be listening to a cracked out party kid?

        The golden ticket is “formerly Twitter” because we actually know what the fuck that one is.

        I’m willing to bet there’s at least one X user on X right now.

      • Nollij@sopuli.xyz
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        18 days ago

        Some places tried calling him “The Artist”, but it never stuck. Not even “The Artist formerly known as Prince” stuck. But “Prince” has endured to his grave and beyond.

    • litchralee@sh.itjust.works
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      18 days ago

      When I see “Xitter”, I think it might be pronounced Exeter, like the town in southwest England. But that feels like an undeserved slight against the good people of Devon and England.

  • Nibodhika@lemmy.world
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    18 days ago

    Forever, unless they start calling it Xcom (which would then be confused with the game) X itself could also mean Xorg (https://x.org) which is a lot older. Not to mention that it looks like someone forgot to remove a placeholder “in the site X, many people talk about…”