Elon Musk has launched X to kill Twitter

It will trash the brand. It will alienate its core users. And relaunching and rebranding a failing business almost never works. As Elon Musk drops the Twitter blue bird and swaps it for an X, we will hear plenty of arguments about why the world’s second richest man has made another critical commercial mistake. In fairness, some of them have a point. Yet Musk’s critics are making a mistake by missing the real purpose of the new name. X only exists to kill off Twitter.

The rebrand was announced in a typically haphazard way. As of today, Twitter will be known simply as X. It was Musk’s boldest move yet since his $44 billion (£34 billion) takeover of the social media site, and one that went down about as well as his other changes to the company since taking it over.

Twitter’s always irritable users were out in force, condemning the move as irresponsible, wrong-header, and risky.