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this post was submitted on 24 Jul 2023
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The other stuff didn't bother people enough to leave, but rebranding? That's the step too far. Anyway Mastodon usage has fluctuated a good amount over the last few months so I don't think that's a good metric for people fleeing Twitter, or should I say X (what a terrible name).
Twitter's value was in its branding as the case with any ubiquitous product. There was zero reason to change it other than to further damage the entity. Fine with me Elon, go ahead and kill it, one more failed corporate driven media site. We don't need any of them.
Yeah, I really don't get why people would care much about branding. It's everything leading up to that that's starting to wear people out.
Don't underestimate the value of a brand. One of the most common reasons people stick around even after negative change is because it still feels familiar and safe.
Now? This isn't Twitter anymore. It may look and feel like Twitter did yesterday, but this is the moment where people stop and look around and ask "What happened?"
Even when Facebook reformed into Meta and Google reformed into Alphabet, they still kept the old brands, to the point where people still call Alphabet "Google" more often than not. Other companies, when they want to get rid of a brand, will slowly phase it out. An ISP like Charter becomes Charter Spectrum, then over time just become Spectrum.
Dropping a brand overnight like a hot potato upsets the customer because brand identity is (tragically) huge in the modern day.
I think this is the main thing. It's like, why draw so much attention to this thing that people liked fine before and which you want to mutate into some sort of hypermonetized cyberpunk dystopia omninetwork? Changing the name to something vague and edgelord is like a big giant sign that says, "REEVALUATE YOUR RELATIONSHIP WITH THIS APP RIGHT NOW!"
It's also the most noticeable for the common user. You can ignore an entire logo change (one that sucks by the way)
Oh God have you met people? When people talk about their tweeting, the neurochemical feedback mechanism is "oh wow you tweet?" It's filled with positive cultural context.
If that response becomes "wtf is twxing?" that entire zeitgeist just collapses and people will view the service with active repulsion. Like a toy they've grown their identity out of. Or a cringe dress they wore to their sibling's wedding.
Yeah and it especially doesn't make sense since the twitter apps - where most people use twitter - are still called twitter and still have the twitter logo. Nothing has changed, and even with a name change and logo change nothing is going to change. It's still twitter, and the people hate-tweeting that they're leaving are still going to stay, since they've been hate-tweeting that they're leaving since Musk bought the place lol.
What are the sources for this "user exodus"? Where are the stats, the numbers? It's just clickbait by people that want twitter to die.