How long do you think we'll keep seeing "formerly Twitter"?

Submitted ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨Steve@communick.news⁩ to ⁨nostupidquestions@lemmy.world⁩

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?

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Comments

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spankmonkey@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ 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.

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- BeatTakeshi@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
  Also shitter, xitter, shitler
  
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  - SeekPie@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
    Is the trying to look like the letter “X”?
    
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  - gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
    It’s like he has the concept of jumping
    
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sxan@midwest.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
I never stopped calling it Twitter. X is a window manager, a letter of the alphabet, or the most algebraic variable name. It’s not a name for a company.

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- josefo@leminal.space ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  tHe EvErYtHiNg aPp!!!11
  
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  - NocturnalEngineer@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    It’s just twitter and a zoom clone right?
    
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TrippyHippyDan@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
As long as it makes Musk mad 😂

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- Tujio@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ 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.
  
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  - TrippyHippyDan@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
    Especially when said shithead is fine with deadnaming people.
    
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Concave1142@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ 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.

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EveryMuffinIsNowEncrypted@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
Twitter is the only thing I will ever be okay with deadnaming.

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jaggedrobotpubes@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
It’s still twitter now and always will be so it doesn’t matter.

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Mothra@mander.xyz ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Hopefully until the platform dies

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Ephera@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ 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.

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clockwork_octopus@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
I’ll keep calling it twitter as long as musk keeps deadnaming his daughter

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- JackGreenEarth@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
  So you’ll call it X if he becomes a good parent?
  
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  - clockwork_octopus@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
    Ha! Fat chance of that happening.
    
    I dunno, maybe.
    
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- JackGreenEarth@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
  Which daughter, what’s the source for that?
  
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  - clockwork_octopus@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
    Vivian. She publicly denounced him, changed her name, and gave an interview about how horrible musk is as a father. There are many articles written about this, here is just one.
    
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GlassHalfHopeful@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
I’m pretty sure that “x, formerly known as twitter” is the name of the company. So… forever.

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Mandy@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
Everyone collectively agreed x is stupid and I hope spite will make sure this sentiment never changes

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- sho@ani.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ 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.
  
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Contramuffin@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ 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

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Nibodhika@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
Forever, unless they start calling it Xcom (which would then be confused with the game) X itself could also mean Xorg (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…”

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BigPotato@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ 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.

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- lettruthout@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
  You’re referring to the former artist formerly known as the artist formerly known as Prince?
  
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- CoggyMcFee@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ 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.
  
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- Steve@communick.news ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
  Well he changed his name to a literally unpronounceable logo, so in that case there was no real other option.
  
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  - BigPotato@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ 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.
    
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  - Nollij@sopuli.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ 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.
    
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something_random_tho@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Xitter has quite the ring to it.

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- themeatbridge@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  In my headcanon, Twitter users were called twits, so Xitter users are called xits, pronounced appropriately.
  
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- litchralee@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ 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.
  
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  - Gold_E_Lox@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    i pronounce it like Xi, like zhitter, or just shitter
    
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njordomir@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
They really shouldn’t be allowed to name anything after a single letter. VW, BMW, ABC, TBS are all bad enough. X conflicts with too many established uses.

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- jol@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
  None of those brands you mention are letters. They mean things, and in fact started by being called those things, but people organically shortened their names. Stress on organically. X as a name is trying so hard to sound cool and futuristic that people felt forced to adopt it, and instantly hated it.
  
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theunknownmuncher@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Pretty sure it’s still just twitter

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Kolanaki@yiffit.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
We didn’t stop hearing Prince referred to as “the artist formerly known as Prince” until he changed his name from that symbol back to Prince.

I expect the same for the website formerly known as Twitter.

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jol@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
I think it will take a whole generation to die off before that happens, because X just isn’t significant enough as a word. You can’t say “I saw it on X” and have people understand you. You can’t say I exed, people still continue saying “I tweeted”. “I posted on X” is simply inferior.

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K1nsey6@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
It will always be Twitter to me

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Jimmycrackcrack@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
Hopefully in a year or two they’ll eventually just call it Twitter or maybe if we’re lucky it will go out of busi and then they’ll probably still just call it Twitter because the X thing would then have just been a short lived portion of its overall lifespan.

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emerald@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
I think one of the reasons why we’re still seeing this dome by journalists is because Elon’s takeover is probably relevant to whatever it is they’re reporting. I’ve definitely seen articles just refer to it as “X”. But whenever it’s a story about some crazy racist shit someone said or how poorly their advertising business is doing, it’s “formerly Twitter”.

That said, I think online people who aren’t writing for news outlets and aren’t insane will — for the most part — always call it Twitter out of spite until the site either dies or Musk sells it and it changes back.

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ContrarianTrail@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
I never stopped calling it Twitter and I never will. Just like Facebook will always be Facebook.

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weew@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
X is just a vague term though. It’s also often used as a placeholder for unknown or variable things. So the “formerly Twitter” is going to stick for quite a while.

It’s like naming a product “The Thing”. Anyone who talks about it will always have to clarify what Thing they are talking about basically forever.

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MimicJar@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
Comcast introduced the “Xfinity” branding in 2010. I still call refer to it as “Comcast”. Any conversation I have where an ISP comes up, the word “Comcast” is used. If someone says “Xfinity”, they often follow it up with “you know, Comcast”.

Now that’s a VERY clear brand change.

The name “X” is a VERY confusing brand change. It will likely be called Twitter forever. In fact at some point Musk will sell or give up on “X” and I guarantee within a year the new owner will change the name back to Twitter.

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- Steve@communick.news ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
  In that case Comcast is still the company name. Xfinity is just the brand of the consumer services division.
  
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  - MimicJar@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
    Sure it isn’t a perfect comparison, but the idea is the same.
    
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BackOnMyBS@lemmy.autism.place ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
The next gen is gonna be making fun of Gen Z by saying “formally Twitter” and Millennials are finally going to win.

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- Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  It’ll be the first win we ever had. We damn sure aren’t winning in the housing market.
  
  Hey, millenials. Show of hands, who has a house???
  
  See, millenials HAVE hands. You just don’t see them, because none of us have houses.
  
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  - MolochAlter@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
    We’re doing ok in Europe.
    
    Even with lower salaries than the US, most people in their 30s I know have a mortgage.
    
    I myself bought at 31 with my wife.
    
    It’s not affordable for everyone but it’s doable for people with actual salaries, you just might have to compromise a bit on position or size.
    
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RedEyeFlightControl@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
No one likes their x

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- sem@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
  I see what you did there
  
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Evotech@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
They will just call it threads. Because that’s what they will use

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BetaBlake@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
Until the company is dead

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andrew_s@piefed.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
It has happening. If you look for news of, e.g. "Arnold Schwarzenegger endorses Harris", most outlets just say 'X'.

In my results, The Guardian, the BBC, The Independent, Fortune, MSNBC, The Washington Post and The Hill just used 'X'. Politico said 'on social media'. Only Forbes did the 'formerly Twitter' thing.

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