We don’t report on every Twitter/X related story; keeping track of all Elon Musk’s constant tweaks and re-tweaks of the social platform is a full-time job. But this past week, you may have seen some big news – and with Apple getting involved, now feels like the time for a quick recap.
That’s right: Twitter is no more after a sudden and controversial rebrand to ‘X‘. Musk has a well-known obsession with the letter X, and decided a single letter on a black background is superior to a decade of familiar and well-liked branding. Twitter’s name, its bird logo, its distinct shade of blue, and even the word “tweet” have been unceremoniously binned in favor of the new look. We’ll let you be the judge of how good an idea that is.
But despite those changes coming thick and fast, the official iOS app kept its Twitter branding for a full week. That’s because Apple doesn’t allow apps to have single-letter names. Until now.
Apple seems to have made a one-off exception for the app formerly known as Twitter, allowing Musk to push through the change at the end of July. That means X is now live on the App Store, with a slightly cringy new slogan: “Blaze Your Glory!” We don’t really know what it means either.
This rebrand is perhaps the biggest single change of Musk’s reign. But whether you use Twitter – sorry, X – religiously or avoid it like the plague, it’s certainly interesting to see Apple sidestepping an App Store policy to give Musk special treatment, even if only for a minor thing like name length.
Related reading: alternative social apps to fill the Twitter void