X: the controversial end of Twitter

The saga that involves the Twitter and Elon Musk it is not recent at all, however, with the end of July, came another controversy that left the digital world in boiling state. Elon Musk, known for his ventures in innovative companies such as Tesla, SpaceX, or Neuralink, turned his attention to one of the world's most famous social networks, Twitter, at the end of 2021.

In October 2022, after months of negotiations, speculations, 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 on the social network, such as the purchase of verified accounts with Twitter Blue and the dismissal of half of the company's team, which led major advertisers to leave 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 functionalities 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 to 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 became known as Meta. 

In a few days, the famous logo of little blue bird disappeared, the name Twitter became part of memory and the X was already on the air. As expected, this change brought a series of related controversies and user 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 mention 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 registered trademarks were not taken into account. Furthermore, the metamorphosis into a superapp raises legal and ethical concerns related to users' privacy of data. Finally, the integration of various functionalities into 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 monetizing the posts of subscribers of X Premium (formerly Twitter Blue), that is, it started paying users for their posts on the social network. This, although on one hand it seems positive, led to thousands of users starting to post sensationalist content or even false, with the aim of making gains through the platform, since oversight was also reduced over Musk's management. 

Musk's bold vision to turn X into a superapp may be admirable, however, it seems not to have been very well planned. The name change happened simply because the entrepreneur likes the letter/name X, the change was announced and implemented on the same day, and there are still several places where you can see the words, for example, "Twitter" or "tweet," within the social network. All that remains is for us to watch to see the success (or failure) of X.