For those who have already freed themselves from the app over tweet limits or not wanting to pay for verification, the platform’s billionaire overlord Elon Musk has rolled out some pretty interesting branding of the former ‘bird app’, now named X, has left users feeling both amused and unsettled by yet another seemingly useless update. 

”I think the redesign is wet shit from a butt,“ @jaboukie tells us over direct message. ”Twitter was never perfect – even before Musk – but one thing they always had going for them was their branding. Tumblr, Facebook and Instagram all had posts. Twitter had *tweets*. They were world-building, honestly.”
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“Unfortunately, a flawed but beautiful and irreplaceable world getting ruined by a billionaire on an ego quest is to be expected at this point,” he continues.⁠

Below, we ask some Dazed names – Aliyah’s Interlude, Doja Cat, Dril, Jaboukie, Joshua Citarella, Slayyyter and Rayne Fisher-Quann – how they would rebrand Twitter.

DOJA CAT, POP STAR

Burn it to the fucking ground. You’re welcome.

DRIL, TWITTER LORD

He should maybe turn Twitter into a condoms or dildos-selling website, because he’s already fucking us. Or maybe he could put a big ass Bullseye on my page since people love to target me.

JABOUKIE, COMEDIAN

If I were that billionaire doing the running? I would double down: more birds. Customise your Twitter experience with a bird of your choosing. Peacock if you’re fancy, a shoebill if you’re nasty. I’d also consult with the furry community to create a personality quiz to find your bird. Then I would hire many of those people because Twitter has taught me a lot of furries have tech jobs and/or are great with graphic design.

RAYNE FISHER-QUANN, WRITER

Twitter needs to introduce a MySpace-esque ranking of your favourite and least favourite mutuals that’s prominently displayed on your profile. I’m hoping that if we maximise the interpersonal Discord on the platform it will help distract everyone from participating in political misinformation – kind of a long shot, but worth a try. But I’d also like to introduce sort of a big red button feature where every person can give one trusted friend the ability to log you out of your account – or even nuke it entirely – if you start posting too crazily. Like, if you’re really spiralling on the timeline, your friend can input a special password or something and your account self-destructs until they do a wellness check-in.

In general I’d like to see the whole platform get a bit more chic too. There’s way too many tabs and metric visualisers now – a lot of visual clutter! I think we need to go a lot more minimalist and maybe shift the colour scheme to something more fun (maybe pink?). I do like the bird logo because it reminds me of nature, and I feel like he’s my friend.

SLAYYYTER, POP STAR

“I’d revamp it into Myspace 2.0 (see below).”

ALIYAH’S INTERLUDE, INFLUENCER

“I would make it so everyone gets to choose what colour layout they would want their Twitter profile and timeline to be, and I would allow everyone to edit their tweets even after they’ve sent it. Also you could separate your bookmarks.”

JOSHUA CITARELLA, ARTIST AND INTERNET RESEARCHER 

“I’ve written about this before, but I think there should be separate blue checks for verification and paid accounts: anonymous political accounts should have the option to be unverified with affordable access to customer support that carefully reviews their legal speech. Conversely, politicians can refuse to pay for a platform (or to boycott Twitter) but we do need to know it is verifiably them behind their political statements. X is a silly branding choice but it’s still better than the metaverse!”

THE DIGI FAIRY, CREATIVE AGENCY AND INTERNET AND YOUTH CULTURE SPECIALISTS 

“If the recent Barbiecore trend is anything to go by, Elon needs to go back to the drawing board, remove this boring af black and white ‘X’ and go in the opposite direction, make it gay and make it pink. Twitter subcultures (the queers and the girlies) kinda run that platform, anything worth reading and sharing comes from them. While he’s at it, give us an edit button.  

“[He should also] bring it back to basics, keep the name Twitter and go revert to 140 characters. Give everyone the ability to wipe their old tweets, nobody needs to see what I was saying about Eurovision in 2011. And at this stage, he should just make everyone’s bookmarks public and watch people sweat! 

“Other things: Incorporate a forum-style approach like Reddit, with moderators and community guidelines rather than a self-righteous CEO who calls the shots and makes these weird rebranding decisions on a whim – give the power to the people. And introduce a new font setting, comic sans.” – Jordan Mulvaney, Creative Digital Strategist

“As a tech innovator, Musk has an opportunity here to create a new wild Wild West that harkens back to the early internet days. All apps are turning into one, and have that sterile Meta look and feel. Collectively fatigued with the spawning of new social apps, we yearn for the nostalgic days that made social media so fun in the first place: self-expression via customisation. Now defunct sites and apps like Myspace, Piczo, and MSN messenger were some of our earliest exposures to the world of coding and html. Why not truly make it the people’s platform by creating open-source features for profile pages including choices in fonts, colours, music, cursor symbols? He could even do logo submissions and have a revolving door of user-generated idents. Elon’s decisions seem chaotic and rogue, he should embrace that identity with his platform and win back audience love by providing a safe space for the people to run free and for Twitter to evolve into a man-made monster truly created by the community. Retweet that!” – Jessica Cheng, Creative Lead

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