X Calls Itself ‘Formerly Twitter’ in App Store Shift
X, Elon Musk’s renamed social media platform, has added a phrase to Apple’s app store that is found all over these days to describe the app: “formerly Twitter.”
The X app previously bore the description, “Blast your glory,” Business Insider reported.
The same change does not appear on Google’s Play, the store for Android apps, where the X app does not offer any description.
Searches on both platforms for “Twitter” turn up ads for rival social media platforms before the X app: Meta’s Threads in the Apple store and Donald Trump’s Truth Social in the Play store.
The description change may be an attempt to counter those search results, but it points to a larger issue: since Musk changed the name of the platform to X and jettisoned its iconic bird logo in July, downloads of the app have fallen dramatically.
Musk, after purchasing the platform in October, grew to hate the bird logo, author Walter Isaacson said in his recent biography of Musk.
An analysis by media strategist Eric Seufert found that it fell to the 54th most downloaded app on the app store from the 35th immediately after the name change, Business Insider reported.
Seufert said the rebrand was likely behind the slump, because consumers are confused by the disappearance of the bird logo.
Twitter remains the fifth-most popular website globally — seventh in the U.S., where about a quarter of all its traffic originates — with about 6.4 billion visits last month, according to traffic tracker Similarweb.
Marketing experts at the time slammed the rebrand as “completely irrational,” Business Insider noted, and warned that it could wipe out billions in brand value.
Musk’s mercurial leadership and sweeping changes have also driven away scores of advertisers. The company last month sued hate speech tracking nonprofit the Center for Countering Digital Hate, claiming that its research finding a proliferation of hate speech on the site intentionally hurt its advertising business.
Amid a threat to file suit against the Anti Defamation League over its criticism of the uptick in hate speech on the site, Musk said U.S. advertising revenue is still down 60% since he bought the platform. He has since met with the CEO of the group.
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