• crashfrog@lemm.ee
    7·
    7 months ago

    What was ever the value of Twitter as a brand? They’re not in the T-shirt business.

    • JohnDClay@sh.itjust.works
      19·
      7 months ago

      Tweet because synonymous with microblogging, like Netflix and streaming for a time. Companies would kill to get that sort of brand penetration into common vocabulary.

      • crashfrog@lemm.ee
        3·
        7 months ago

        Brand recognition is monetizable when you can apply it to other products. People like Apple computers; plop the logo on a phone and they’ll be predisposed to buy an Apple phone.

        But Twitter doesn’t sell anything else. There aren’t going to be any Twitter-branded products that try to monetize the brand. So what’s the value of the brand lost by changing the name to “X”?

        • volvoxvsmarla @lemm.ee
          11·
          7 months ago

          I would guess the ad revenue. Twitter sells ads. Businesses are probably less likely to advertise on a rebranded platform that implemented so many controversial changes that advertising on it is now not only hitting a much smaller target group (since people left) but is also associated negatively, which might lead to losing even more clients. It is like a local organic fair trade food brand being associated with nestle. This will probably not lead to an increase in sales but much the opposite.

          • crashfrog@lemm.ee
            2·
            7 months ago

            Twitter isn’t losing users, it’s gaining them. They may be losing advertisers but “branding” doesn’t really have anything to do with that. Advertisers go where the eyeballs are, brands are otherwise meaningless to them.

            • homicidalrobot@lemm.ee
              1·
              7 months ago

              Tweet being used ubiquitously was profitable the same way xerox being used as a verb to mean “scan and copy” was profitable. Instead of looking at xerox machines first, in this case, people would look to twitter (and the ads on the site, clicked or not) first when it came to social media information flow.

              I’m not saying it’s a good thing that anyone uses only one social media, but it was a reality. Twitter has moved down to only about 8% market share from a dominant position. It does NOT command the audience it once did, and advertisers are moving away from it for more reasons than the literal antisemitism and general ignorance spouted by the new owner. It’s a multitude of factors dragging it down in overall value, but deleting brand recognition by associating the site with the multiple previous failed X projects by the same guy who fucked up the previous ones? Not priceless.

                • homicidalrobot@lemm.ee
                  1·
                  7 months ago

                  I hate to tell you this, but X makes quarterly business reports like every other company. You are making up a value basis that is polluted by freely given verification. You can see how many millions in revenue they lose quarterly. Their new plan is CLEARLY not working, there’s literal evidence.

        • jaybone@lemmy.world
          4·
          7 months ago

          You know all those links and buttons and toolbars and popups on websites that say share on Twitter with the Twitter logo? That’s the brand.

          • crashfrog@lemm.ee
            1·
            7 months ago

            They do it so that you’ll carry over your positive impressions with the products you’ve used, to the new products they want to sell you. You like the Apple Mac, so you think you’ll like the Apple iPhone.

            But Twitter just has the one product and it’ll always have just the one product. They’re not making a second product, ever. There’s nothing to transfer a favorable impression to. So what’s the “value” of Twitter as a brand, distinct from Twitter as an app? All Twitter is is an app.

            • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldM
              1·
              7 months ago

              The same value as Coca-Cola has. They don’t have any new products to sell you, everyone knows what Coca-Cola tastes like and no one is switching from Coke to Pepsi because they saw an ad.

              They do it because keeping a brand in the public consciousness is itself a value to a company.

              • crashfrog@lemm.ee
                2·
                7 months ago

                They don’t have any new products to sell you

                What? No, Coca-cola has new products every fucking year. Several times a year. Literally two months ago they launched “Coca-Cola Y3000 Zero Sugar”, a flavor supposedly created by “AI”. And just knowing that Coca-Cola launched it, you probably have an idea what it tastes like. That’s what branding does. But Twitter doesn’t do any of that, because again, they don’t launch new products. They have one product and they’ll always have one product.

                • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldM
                  1·
                  7 months ago

                  My point, which I though was obvious, was why does Coca-Cola advertise their main product that they never change except for one ill-advised try in the 1980s? What does it benefit them to have those ads?

    • LazyBane@lemmy.worldEnglish
      6·
      7 months ago

      They’re a social media site, brand is incredibly important.

      Nobody is job networking on reddit, nobody is dating on LinkedIn, and nobody keeping in touch with their highschool friend’s on Tinder.

      The brand dictates how you use the business model. Onlyfans tired to pivot away from cyber-prostitutes but couldn’t beciase that is their brand.

      • crashfrog@lemm.ee
        2·
        7 months ago

        One of the things I think is really unusual about Twitter is how bifurcated the user base used to be. I don’t think we understood exactly how until the verification thing.

        On the one side, you’ve got people like me, the regular Twitter users; I followed a mix of people I knew professionally, people who were media figures, and then just random-ass accounts who were doing tweets I liked. I don’t pay for Blue, I don’t really care who’s “verified”, since that just meant “I work for a blog or a corporation” and advertising content is irritating and I avoid it if I can. Overall when Musk took over it didn’t change my experience at all, except that all of the media accounts I followed started complaining nonstop and it just got tedious and now I follow a lot fewer of them. One thing that’s changed is that “For You” is a lot better than “Following” since Musk re-did the algorithm (used to be the other way) and now I’m on the “For You” tab about 100% of the time. It’s more fun and more interesting.

        On the other side you’ve got media Twitter users. The people for whom verification was a free perk of the job, people for whom the algorithm just showed them their peers affirming their content rather than any critical perspective, and who really have experienced a sea change in their Twitter experience. But largely what they’re complaining about is that their Twitter experience is now more like how mine always was. I think this is what people are talking about when they say “TPOT”, or “This Part of Twitter.”

        So I guess what I’m getting at is that there used to be two Twitter “brands”; there was the one I knew, which hasn’t changed and probably won’t; and there was the one you knew if you were employed in the media in some capacity, where that experience probably has substantially degraded since now they’re forced to have interactions outside of TPOT. I think when people in the media say “Musk ruined Twitter”, or “X destroyed the Twitter brand”, that’s what they’re talking about because Twitter as they knew it is gone.

        But for most people, people like me, Twitter is the same as its ever been. Little mini-posts from people who have interesting things to say.