Twitter changes to X

Many of you I am sure have seen that Twitter is rebranding to X — changing the logo, the name of the service, the company’s name has changed, even the verb of Tweeting has changed to Making an X or X’ing- which rolls off just as well as “making a thread” or “threading” so no leg up on Mark Zuckerberg here. Big shake-up in the status quo. Who would have thought? Apparently this has long been in the making, and perhaps one of the primary reasons for Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter in the first place. Or maybe this is just a hail mary to drum up more buzz around the app that doesn’t involve Elon Musk burning it to the ground.

This is a move from the tech billionaire to follow the footsteps of China’s WeChat — to create a super app that allows connection, communication, expression, banking, transactions, storefronts, games, you name it. It just seems too early in my opinion. There’s been zero move to creating this SuperApp -  no incorporation of different external apps or services, it’s literally just Twitter but with a new coat of paint. Why rebrand without any change to your business model? That’s the same thing that Meta did, and their shares took a big hit for it. I think this is just a publicity stunt to hopefully get people more excited about advertising on Twitter (sorry, X), without really making any real change yet. Lots of big promises, though.

I also think it’s kind of funny Elon Musk just had someone in the comments make him a logo he liked. I can only hope that they’re getting paid a large sum for that, because this logo is going to be everywhere. It’s jarring, really. I’m not sure I like the X logo for Twitter’s current business model. I’m not even trying to make the adult content joke, either. It really just seems too… stripped down? And upon some research, it’s just a dressed up unicode X. Unicode!!! It just seems so lazy. I hope the artist got paid a decent chunk of change, though.

For those of you unaware about why Elon Musk is branding it to X, it’s a long story that has its beginnings many years ago. When Elon Musk was CEO of PayPal in 2000, he tried to rebrand the company to X.com. Focus groups thought that X.com sounded like an adult website. I can understand that. Elon Musk disagreed, though, saying that X.com was the kind of name for something that would take over the global financial industry.

He had big aspirations for PayPal then. I think he may have been a little too eager to move digital before the world does. Hell, Runescape hadn’t even come out yet and that’s where global banking really started to take notes. The Grand Exchange, man. Anyways, though, Elon was forced out of the company. Making an X.com where it revolutionizes the financial status quo has been a dream of Elon Musk for a little over twenty years now. And it’s clear to see he’s at least passionate about it. And he’s thinking that this X.com is going to make up 50% of the global financial industry in a few years, at least according to some interviews he’s been in.

I’ve seen some positive sentiment towards it. Like of course he would buy a platform with a pre-built user base to create his super-app on. It just makes sense, right? That’s what people are saying. I kind of disagree, though. The infrastructure of Twitter is just not in the right place to allow Elon Musk to pivot completely over to this idea that X is going to be more than a digital speakeasy for people. If Elon really wanted that out of the gate, he should have bought multiple different companies to merge under one app right off the bat. It’s not like he’s going to make enough money with X to buy out these companies with Twitter’s revenue. It’s an unprofitable business model already. This is a lot of work for coders to incorporate.

The only move from what I can see is that X Corp partnered with eToro to let its users see real-time stock prices on the app, as well as buy and sell shares and cryptocurrency. Other than that? Nothing. What we’re missing from our SuperApp now is just banking, e-commerce, in-app games, a valid video player, a search engine… And that’s a lot of deals to make.

Rebranding Twitter as X to incorporate this big move to a SuperApp seems charged with just as much foresight as Meta’s big name change from Facebook in regards to their virtual reality ventures (which ironically, are being canned as the meta quest pro has reportedly been cancelled after their price drop to a thousand dollars). Yes, that’s right. The Meta Quest Pro which really had an awkward fit and not much functionality compared to its entry-level counterpart was outperformed by its entry-level counterpart. Reportedly Meta is quietly cutting production on it. And Horizon Worlds, man. Just last fall the monthly active user base was around 200,000, a far cry from the expected 500,000 active monthly users at the end of 2022. The Meta Quest Pro had no use case, Horizon Worlds is way below the mark for its player base (and keep in mind too, that these stats are from over six months ago. I have no clue what it looks like now). Nobody really wants to sit at work or exercise with goggles that have a heavy battery right in front of your eyeballs. Side note, that’s why I really like Apple’s Vision Pro — getting rid of the battery pack in front of the eyes and letting it be on your person still will really allow more use of the goggles. Anyways— Meta is still called Meta with not much to show on their Metaverse. Sure, the stock prices are going up, but I would place a large wager that has very very little to do with their Metaverse.

Like, I get it. These companies want to reach the next level and diversify their offerings, take over different markets and bring up their market cap to the trillions. But in X’s case, it just seems too early. Meta really went full force forward towards their virtual reality offerings, and since then have reeled it back and their stock prices have gone up. X is probably going to go through the same thing. Until they have any sort of offerings beyond checking the price of bitcoin… you know.

Want to ease into this super app idea without disrupting your consumer base? Start implementing features of your super app without changing the name of the app— yet. When you start to get bigger, rebrand the app. “X”… powered by Twitter. Satisfy those in Elon Musk’s camp, while not changing the status quo and having people make fun of you. But again, he changed it too early.

And it’s so early, in fact, that Elon didn’t tell the landlord of X’s San Francisco office building that they were changing the sign. Police arrived on the scene as workers were dismantling the old Twitter sign, disrupting the efforts and only leaving an “ER” on the side of the building. If that isn’t the best metaphor to describe this situation, I don’t know what is.

I respect Elon Musk’s determination, but everything he has done with Twitter so far has really seemed erratic and without much thought. Even the purchase — considering that he bought Twitter (or was forced to, rather,) for almost three times the current valuation of the company. Yikes, man. Or bringing the company private and wasting billions of dollars just to make the company private right at a stock price of $54.20 (yes, it was for a weed joke.) The rate limit changes, verification badges and Twitter blue… It really just seems like this dude needs a board of directors to rein him in. But, like I mentioned, last time he tried to change a company to X, he got forced out by the board of directors. Go figure.

Perhaps I’m talking with my foot in my mouth and in a year I’ll be shocked at how negatively I am reacting to the rebranding of Twitter. Until then, though? I’m going to think this is a PR stunt. A silly PR stunt that really, really, really did not need to happen yet.

I really don’t think anyone is that close to creating a super app besides Google. Meta could be close, considering their ads manager and revenue sources are consolidated pretty well, but their search engine is ineffective. Google just really has it all, especially on the business side. I just think Google My Business is more effective for the consumer than Facebook Business pages. And that’s what is most important here. If you want people to use one app and one app only, you have to make sure it is damn good from the consumer perspective or they will just use another service. You can make the perfect app to make you money but if it’s not easy and fun to use it’s your ass. That’s why everyone was so upset about the Reddit stuff. The Reddit mobile app kinda sucks and people were using third-party services until Reddit priced their API so high.

Anyways, love you Twitter, it’s been a good run. I may be wrong, but I really don’t think this rebrand is more than a PR stunt for now. The infrastructure of the app is not ready to support the services for a super app that Elon Musk is gunning for, and it sure as hell won’t shake up the status quo all that much besides me calling X Twitter again for the millionth time until I get used to it. So for now, it’s just Twitter with a new coat of paint.

Now that we have that out of the way, let’s talk about the gaming industry for the first time in this podcast. And it’s not really in the best state right now, for both the consumer and the companies who are in the industry. Don't get me wrong, the gaming industry is doing great, with the revenue projected at $365 billion globally, almost eight times as large as the film industry’s lowest valuation and a little under three times as large at the industry’s highest according to Enterprise. So the industry is doing fine — but I’m talking about the workers.

As early as 2018 articles are being released citing that developers in the gaming industry are criminally underpaid and overworked, many of whom are having unpaid overtime for the upwards of 20 hours a day these developers are working.

In June of 2022, Uni-Global Union released a study citing that over 60% of employees in the gaming industry were underpaid. Crunch culture causes these employees to work unpaid overtime for a game that may or may not be received well, and according to many reports, they are being criminally underpaid for. The average hourly rate for a video game developer is $20 an hour. Which in Springfield, Missouri, where I live, might not be that bad. But consider that many of these gaming companies are centralized in large cities — San Francisco, L.A., Chicago, New York, where the cost of living is much, much, much higher than where I live.

Crunch culture is no doubt caused by a higher demand for more content by consumers. It’s not an issue specific to the past decade even, with games like Halo 2 having a hellish development cycle back in 2004. This is an issue nonetheless, though. When these companies overpromise and eventually underdeliver because of their unrealistic deadlines, helmed by developers making below the cost of living for their area and not making overtime, no wonder we get these games that are half-baked to horrible. Cyberpunk 2077, Fallout 76, Star Wars Jedi Survivor, Battlefield 2042, Halo Infinite, Lord of the Rings: Gollum, I could go on and on about these games that I was at least somewhat interested in, and when they released and got bad press, I dropped the thought of buying immediately.

But the issue is that the gaming industry is at an all-time high, even with these mediocre releases that nobody is enjoying. What’s the deal here? If the employees are not seeing the money in increased hourly rates even though their industry is soaring, who is?

No doubt the executives of the companies, who are still making money hand and fist over the people who developed the games that their company released. And then moves in the model of live service gaming, where companies can release a half-finished game and release the rest of it as “expansions” or “updates” while monetizing through a battle pass system.

The worst offender of this, I think, is Halo Infinite. Which is a huge shame because I am, or was, a huge fan of the Halo series. The game went through a terrible production cycle with many high-level executives outright dropping the project. The game entered crunch, barely squeaked out a game with six maps and four game modes without the campaign even coming out, and then began a live service model to patch the rest of the content in. The problem is that it’s been almost two years and barely any content has come out except models for the shop and for the battle pass.

It makes you long for the days of Bungie at the helm of Halo, creating games with passion, and games that they wanted to play. But even Bungie is struggling to keep their head on straight. Destiny 2, Bungie’s only offering as a games studio at the moment has one of the most predatory monetization models I have ever seen. With expansions that cost as much as a full-sized game, while still also including loot crates and including a battle pass in form of the three-month “season pass” which releases a few missions and strikes and quests to get you more loot. I read somewhere that it would cost someone over 500 dollars to unlock everything for the Destiny series, and that doesn’t even include Eververse stuff which is just unboxing crates. At the moment? Steam reviews for Destiny are tanking, and the community is turning against Bungie for their business tactics. But they’re probably still making a lot of money, considering people still buy their content. In mobile gaming, “whales”, who are the top 10% of spenders in the consumer base, make up over 50% of the app’s revenue. I am sure the statistics are quite the same for live-service content, considering spending is encouraged by a rotating cosmetic shop and the randomized loot of opening crates.

Team Fortress 2 really set us up for failure on this one, creating the precedent that you can just release hats for the characters and make money without really making content for your game.

These predatory, anti-consumer tactics in the game industry in regards to live service, as well as the trend of triple-a games releasing with the game barely even done causes the consumer to be wary about their purchases, even with games made by developers held in high esteem. How do I know that CS2 isn’t going to suck? Or Starfield, since Fallout 76 was such a flop? Or Payday 3, who announced that they are moving towards always-online and live service. These games that I would be very excited for are concerning to me because I don’t know how much I’m going to like them or hate them.

You just can’t have a game like Halo 3 release anymore, with twenty modes, a full-sized campaign, tons of maps, an expansive and fun multiplayer, a map creator, a theatre mode, and file sharing capability all under one roof. The new Halo game made you wait to play just Slayer, which is just Team Deathmatch, for like six months. Forge took over a year and still is being patched in. Hell, I don’t even know if Theatre mode released because I care so little about the game. And it’s such a shame because the gameplay felt so good, but the content just wasn’t there.

I won’t go as far as to say the gaming industry is dead, because it’s not. The executives are still making money and the status quo is still the same, but it’s just worse for the consumer. I would say gaming is dead for the consumer if anything. Why be engaged in content if it’s just going to spit in your face and make fun of you for paying sixty dollars for a game that wasn’t finished, then ask you to pay another twenty five to paint your character green and give him cat ears?

And not to mention workers are, in my opinion, being exploited for their passion for the industry. And it’s similar to what’s going on in Hollywood right now. Huge budgets, little pay for the actors for a high-demand entertainment industry. The problem is that these actors and writers have a union to represent them as a whole and the video game developers do not. That same study I mentioned earlier cited that 79% of developers definitely or somewhat support a union. Now the issue to unionize or not unionize is a very particular issue and I am not going to weigh in right or wrong because I’m definitely unqualified on there, but it’s still something to chew on.

My plea to gaming companies: pay your employees more. You have the money to do it, especially when you move to live service and can recoup your losses extremely quickly. Another ask: realistic timelines. Don’t release games when you know they won’t be finished. I’m sure that this is a publishing company issue and a board of directors thing more than developer and middle management, but look at how hard you’re working these passionate people to the bone, just to release games you’re going to have to apologize for in an official PR statement. The consumers aren’t happy, and eventually this WILL blow back in your face. Be better, please.

Just a few more things before we wrap up the episode. Cooper-Davis Act has been proposed to Congress, requiring social media and tech companies to report their users for any illegal activity posted or communicated on their platform. Basically, the government wants Snapchat to snitch on you, and if they don’t, they’re going to get fined. Some issues with this: criminal drug activity is extremely vague. Does this reach to marijuana use, and how does this relate to states that have legalized recreational weed? Cause technically, Marijuana is still illegal federally. What about Oregon and their decriminalization of hard drugs? Lot of grey area regarding state legislation and law, and a lot of people aren’t happy about it.

Elon Musk is back again in this week’s podcast, and he’s suing old Twitter’s legal team. Apparently the legal team Twitter hired to make sure Elon didn’t drop out of the acquisition deal double-dipped, charging both an hourly rate and a success fee without specifying in the contract. Elon Musk is headed to court with them, saying that they took advantage of the company while the lame-duck board members had no interest in the financial security of Twitter. Which is funny, because the board had an interest in making sure the company was purchased for 44 billion dollars. Seems like an interest in financial security to me. Anyways, this looks really bad in the press because it just seems like Elon is suing these people for making him buy the company.

Meta and Apple are both in the process of creating their own generative text AIs. Meta has partnered with Alibaba’s cloud to work on theirs, and Apple is doing their own thing on their own time. To think that Siri could be your own real, personal assistant soon sounds sick. Like the Star Trek computer.

And that’s just about it, guys. Thanks for tuning in to the Social Room Podcast this week. We covered a lot of ground and I appreciate you sticking around till the end. Follow the socials linked in the podcast’s description and I will see you next Friday. Have a good weekend!