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[Continuation] Musk buys Twitter II

jeremyp said:
Just for fun, I decided to report the tweet. It was actually quite difficult to select a category that properly included fraud.
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Are they still tweets? Xs don't really tweet anything, like little birdies do. The world moves too fast for me.
 
"I like Twitter. Apart from the employees, and the people using it ... oh, and the name and the branding. I should buy it."

-Musk probably
 
Olmstead said:
"I like Twitter. Apart from the employees, and the people using it ... oh, and the name and the branding. I should buy it."

-Musk probably
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How could Musk make it more of a hilarious disaster?

https://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=87980831&caseType=SERIAL_NO&searchType=statusSearch
From

https://twitter.com/alexweprin/status/1683568173809844229?s=20
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://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=87980831&caseType=SERIAL_NO&searchType=statusSearch
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Lol. Like this is going to help.

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-66284304

Twitter has changed its brand and logo from its famous blue bird to "X".

The new white X on a black background has replaced the blue bird on the desktop version of the social network, although is yet to appear on the mobile app.

"Tweets" will also be replaced, according to Twitter's owner Elon Musk, and posts will be called "x's".
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"Hey, did you see what so-and-so x'ed?" "Tweet" at least is easy to understand as a verb and has already entered the lexicon. If you say someone "tweeted" something, people understand what that means. If you they "x'ed" something, people won't understand.

Whatever you think about Twitter, it is at least a recognizable brand. Now you have to start that process over. Imagine Coca-Cola rebranding. That would be throwing away something that took decades to build. You don't just do that on a whim.
 
Shrinker said:
No surprise, the logo is an overly serious, masculine edifice. A logo for an aftershave called ‘No’. It looks like a band-aid placed the wrong way over a cut. It says denial, rejection, error, stop, close, cancel. If this succeeds, everyone employed in the field of corporate branding should wonder if their job has any purpose at all.
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It certainly does that in Japan I can say. There's a sort of code of 4 symbols that often stand for degrees of how acceptable something is.
The symbols are:
◎ 〇 △ ×
The double circle means top-rate. The single circle means good, but not great. The triangle means barely acceptable and the X stands for unacceptable. People use it as a hand gesture too. Crossing your forearms to make an X shape means no, stop, etc.
 
Puppycow said:
Lol. Like this is going to help.

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-66284304



"Hey, did you see what so-and-so x'ed?" "Tweet" at least is easy to understand as a verb and has already entered the lexicon. If you say someone "tweeted" something, people understand what that means. If you they "x'ed" something, people won't understand.

Whatever you think about Twitter, it is at least a recognizable brand. Now you have to start that process over. Imagine Coca-Cola rebranding. That would be throwing away something that took decades to build. You don't just do that on a whim.
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could sure go for a cold x of x-cola right now
 
Orphia Nay said:
Meta already appears to holds the rights to an X logo.

https://www.businessinsider.com/meta-holds-rights-to-x-twitter-rebrand-elon-musk-2023-7
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My understanding of Trademark law is that you have to actually use it, or you lose it. You can register a trademark or a logo, but if you don't actually use them in association with any products or services, you could lose the right to those trademarks.

My question is: what product and/or service does Meta actually provide or offer in association with this trademark?
 
Puppycow said:
My understanding of Trademark law is that you have to actually use it, or you lose it. You can register a trademark or a logo, but if you don't actually use them in association with any products or services, you could lose the right to those trademarks.

My question is: what product and/or service does Meta actually provide or offer in association with this trademark?
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You certainly have to defend them.
 
Why Musk wants to change Twitter's name and logo at all has already been covered pretty much; but if you're wondering why Musk is fixated on changing Twitter's name specifically to X, it's because Musk originally had the idea of changing PayPal's name to X back when he worked for them in the early days, and he was so convinced of the greatness of this idea that he allegedly personally purchased the x.com domain name for over a million dollars in the hopes of selling it to PayPal at a substantial profit, plans which were frustrated of course when that just never happened.

If that's truly the case, then what we're seeing is yet another business move driven by a long-standing personal rage over a past rejection. It is important that of all the claims about Twitter being an "everything app", the only clearly envisioned future capability is "payments"; i.e., the domain of PayPal, the company that rejected his genius idea.

It's also...really dumb. We're going to have to move from a very naturally-flowing lingo where a tweet is something that is posted on Twitter to an ambiguous one where an X is something that is posted on X. Considering how ingrained discussion of Twitter and things that happen on it has become in media in general, it's going to make for a very awkward transition. Some are going to just resign to still calling them Twitter and tweets purely for the sake of conversational clarity, and it will be amusing to watch what kind of tantrums Musk will throw over that.
 
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Puppycow said:
My understanding of Trademark law is that you have to actually use it, or you lose it. You can register a trademark or a logo, but if you don't actually use them in association with any products or services, you could lose the right to those trademarks.

My question is: what product and/or service does Meta actually provide or offer in association with this trademark?
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I saw someone pointing out that the 'infinity'-looking Meta symbol has an x-shape in it.

I am not a trademark lawyer.
 
Orphia Nay said:
I saw someone pointing out that the 'infinity'-looking Meta symbol has an x-shape in it.
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Probably not relevant, IMO. An infinity shape is different enough that nobody would confuse one for the other.

am not a trademark lawyer.
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Neither am I, and we can probably assume the same for all of us, unless someone tells us otherwise. However, I do work in a field related to intellectual property, specifically patent translation (but very occasionally other IP-related documents).
 
Andy_Ross said:
The App still has the bird
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There's an issue with that, at least from the point of view of the iPhone app. As you may be aware, all iPhone apps have to go through a review by Apple before they are allowed to be distributed through the app store.

Unfortunately, a serious technical problem has arisen in that the review engineers are too busy wetting themselves laughing to pass the app.
 
Some terminology changes:

"To tweet" ⇒ "to X-crete"

"a tweet" ⇒ "an X-cretion"

"Tweet thread" ⇒ "X-crement"

"Twitterati" ⇒ "X-users"

"Person who no longer users X" ⇒ "ex-user"*

*not at all confusing.
 
Puppycow said:
My understanding of Trademark law is that you have to actually use it, or you lose it. You can register a trademark or a logo, but if you don't actually use them in association with any products or services, you could lose the right to those trademarks.

My question is: what product and/or service does Meta actually provide or offer in association with this trademark?
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More likely it would stop X from being able to trademark their X for social media uses. Meaning Meta would not be able to stop X from using an X logo, but X also wouldn't be able to stop other social media apps etc. from using an X logo.
 
No matter what he has further devalued the company, there was financial value in the logo and name if it ever came to a fire sale. That's now also been flushed down the ..er... sink.
 
Darat said:
More likely it would stop X from being able to trademark their X for social media uses. Meaning Meta would not be able to stop X from using an X logo, but X also wouldn't be able to stop other social media apps etc. from using an X logo.
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I think X.org has a legitimate trademark infringement claim. Unfortunately, I don't think they have the financial resources to match Twitter X in a legal dispute, at least not for a few months.
 
Checkmite said:
Why Musk wants to change Twitter's name and logo at all has already been covered pretty much; but if you're wondering why Musk is fixated on changing Twitter's name specifically to X, it's because Musk originally had the idea of changing PayPal's name to X back when he worked for them in the early days, and he was so convinced of the greatness of this idea that he allegedly personally purchased the x.com domain name for over a million dollars in the hopes of selling it to PayPal at a substantial profit, plans which were frustrated of course when that just never happened.

If that's truly the case, then what we're seeing is yet another business move driven by a long-standing personal rage over a past rejection. It is important that of all the claims about Twitter being an "everything app", the only clearly envisioned future capability is "payments"; i.e., the domain of PayPal, the company that rejected his genius idea.

It's also...really dumb. We're going to have to move from a very naturally-flowing lingo where a tweet is something that is posted on Twitter to an ambiguous one where an X is something that is posted on X. Considering how ingrained discussion of Twitter and things that happen on it has become in media in general, it's going to make for a very awkward transition. Some are going to just resign to still calling them Twitter and tweets purely for the sake of conversational clarity, and it will be amusing to watch what kind of tantrums Musk will throw over that.
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You have to wonder what utility an "everything app" would even have. Why would I want to be locked out of my payment accounts if I happen to break the TOS while ****-posting on Twitter? It's hard to imagine Twitter being more overrun with scam bots than it already is, but somehow linking in a payment system would only make it an even more tempting target for fraudsters.

Really doesn't seem to be much more to this than Musk thinks this is a cool idea for some vague reason and is working backwards from there.

Imagining the ISF everything app, where getting a one week suspension means my rent payment is late.
 
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TurkeysGhost said:
You have to wonder what utility an "everything app" would even have. Why would I want to be locked out of my payment accounts if I happen to break the TOS while ****-posting on Twitter? It's hard to imagine Twitter being more overrun with scam bots than it already is, but somehow linking in a payment system would only make it an even more tempting target for fraudsters.

Really doesn't seem to be much more to this than Musk thinks this is a cool idea for some vague reason and is working backwards from there.

Imagining the ISF everything app, where getting a one week suspension means my rent payment is late.
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Relevant to your concerns

https://twitter.com/oneunderscore__/status/1683256018065666048?s=20
Ben Collins
@oneunderscore__
As a guy who has had a private email ABOUT me between two Twitter executives leaked during the Twitter Files fiasco because the new owner of this site falsely believed in an insane conspiracy theory...

let's just say I do not recommend giving this company your banking info.
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Puppycow said:
My understanding of Trademark law is that you have to actually use it, or you lose it. You can register a trademark or a logo, but if you don't actually use them in association with any products or services, you could lose the right to those trademarks.

My question is: what product and/or service does Meta actually provide or offer in association with this trademark?
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The X logo that Meta has the trademark for was originally used for Microsoft Mixer before Meta acquired it.

https://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=...ON&caseType=DEFAULT&searchType=documentSearch

I can't find anywhere that Meta has used it, so they might be in danger of losing that specific trademark. But, there are a lot of textual registrations of just the letter X. I haven't reviewed them to see if any would apply to Twitter's area of business but there might be some that do. There might even be one owned by Musk for x.com.
 
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Since many people are going to be saying "Twi...X" for a while, he should have just called it "Twix". No trademark infringement there!
 
TurkeysGhost said:
You have to wonder what utility an "everything app" would even have. Why would I want to be locked out of my payment accounts if I happen to break the TOS while ****-posting on Twitter? It's hard to imagine Twitter being more overrun with scam bots than it already is, but somehow linking in a payment system would only make it an even more tempting target for fraudsters.

Really doesn't seem to be much more to this than Musk thinks this is a cool idea for some vague reason and is working backwards from there.

Imagining the ISF everything app, where getting a one week suspension means my rent payment is late.
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i think he saw how popular it is in china and thought it would have some utility here, but he didn't account for that if you don't use the everything app the ccp will throw you into a political dissident labor camp for a decade
 
One of the previously nice things about Twitter was that it was so siloed. It was just Twitter, not part of the Meta or Amazon or Google goliath. It was a smaller, focused social media company in a world dominated by mega corporations that increasingly have their fingers in every pie.

I suspect it will stay that way, despite Musk's vague claims of the everything app. Musk is famous for overpromising and never delivering and I suspect he'll lose interest when the realities of what he is proposing become too tedious and complicated to keep him interested.
 
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Do you remember the argument over whether GIFs should be pronounced how they look or how the inventor (?) wanted them to be called “jiffs”. A few nerds tried to use that pronunciation but normal people didn’t. The same is likely to be true here. It will be a shibboleth for Musk sychophants to say “X” but most people will probably say tweet just as people in the UK say Hoover for a vacuum cleaner or how many people say Skype even when talking on Zoom. As mentioned earlier, in Japan, such a symbol looks like “batsu” or no good.

In fact, it is almost like Elon Musk insisting on being known as an idiosyncratic pronoun like “xe” or “xer”.
 
jadebox said:
Just a little background ...

Musk helped found x.com which eventually became PayPal and made Musk a lot of money. The x.com domain redirects to Twitter now.
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I prefer 'er', which is what's on the side of their HQ now.
 
jadebox said:
Just a little background ...

Musk helped found x.com which eventually became PayPal and made Musk a lot of money. The x.com domain redirects to Twitter now.
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x.com was very much the junior partner in the merger that became paypal. Realistically, PayPal was buying out their competitors and Musk got taken along for the ride to wild success. Like a lot of early tech millionaires/billionaires, he just had the good luck to be in the right place at the right time during a economic and technological boom.
 
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Darat said:
Not quite: New logo

[qimg]http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/imagehosting/164be743e2821e.png[/qimg]

Unicode


[qimg]http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/imagehosting/164be74d3d9804.png[/qimg]
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A Sans-Serif version?

jeremyp said:
Rebranding has happened. The bird is dead.

Edit: Not quite x.com redirects to twitter.com.
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What about xxx.com?

Arcade22 said:
People will be X'ing instead of tweeting. Instead of reading tweets people will be reading X's.

That just sounds ugly. The brand and image of twitter has been one of the few things except inertia keeping the service popular and this is only going to accelerate its demise.
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People are already departing.

jeremyp said:
Don't google xhamster at work.
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:D

arthwollipot said:
That's exactly his stated intention with the "everything app" stuff. He wants to make an anglo WeChat.
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We have regulation here, and laws.
 
jadebox said:
The X logo that Meta has the trademark for was originally used for Microsoft Mixer before Meta acquired it.
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This:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mixer_(service)

Mixer was an American video game live streaming platform. The service launched on January 5, 2016, as Beam, under the ownership of co-founders Matthew Salsamendi and James Boehm. The service placed an emphasis on interactivity, with low stream latency and a platform for allowing viewers to perform actions that can influence a stream.

The service was acquired by Microsoft in August 2016, after which it was renamed Mixer in 2017 and integrated into Microsoft's Xbox division (including top-level integration on Xbox One). In 2019, Mixer gained attention when it signed two top streamers from its main competitor, Twitch—Ninja and Shroud—to a contract with the service.

However, citing an inability to scale its operations, Microsoft announced on June 22, 2020, that Mixer would be shutting down by the end of July 22, and that an agreement had been made with Facebook for monetized channels to join similar programs on Facebook's game streaming platform. Microsoft officially shut down Mixer on July 22, 2020.[2]
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So there's the answer I believe. It's a red herring. The logo and trademark haven't been used in 3 years.

The real problem is that it's just a dumb rebranding that adds no value. I doubt Meta is going to try to claim that this infringes on Microsoft's preexisting trademark that they transferred to Meta but is no longer used by either company.
 
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