The "X" trademark owned by Meta belongs to Mixer, a game streaming site formerly run by Microsoft, which was shut down in 2017, but its operations were taken over by Facebook Gaming. The "X" trademark of Mixer was also given to Meta at that time.
Isn’t it only the logo that’s trademarked, rather than the name “X”? I am not an expert on trademarks by all means, how likely is it that Meta would actually have a case here?
It doesn't matter if it's a trademark nightmare... it's a branding nightmare.
Musk is showing the world that he got lucky with his previous ventures. His management of Twitter has been a display of poor management at every level.
If you were less than a year into your position as CEO of a company with revenue divided by half, ex-employees suing you, banned journalists from your platform in the middle of some half-thought-out free speech debate... would you not be fired?
Everything about this makes me think he's just too rich to be fired... anyone else would have been. He just owns too much to not be given any more chances.
> Everything about this makes me think he's just too rich to be fired... anyone else would have been.
Don't really like this framing of the problem - he owns a majority of voting shares, and he paid (or, rather, overpaid) mightily for that right. You can't really be "fired" from being an owner, and I'll note Musk is no longer CEO (and, sure, you can argue the new CEO was hired to be the fall girl/glass cliff example, but that was still her eyes-wide-open choice).
People wrung their hands about Zuckerberg as well (he also has a majority of voting shares of Facebook), but in retrospect that hand-wringing looked premature, at least from a shareholder perspective - Meta is nearly back at its peak and has tripled its stock price from late 2022.
SpaceX and Tesla certainly involve luck, but it's way more than that. A huge element of the success of both companies is Elon managing to hire extremely bright and extremely hard working people for both companies. A huge element of that was the extremely ambitious and cool nature of what they're working on.
> Musk is showing the world that he got lucky with his previous ventures.
1 dud
A few successes
It's really hard to tell to what extent it's luck versus skill. It'd be much easier to tell if we'd live for 10K years and he'd have started like 50 companies. If even 10 of those would've become wildly successful, whereas the mean baseline of other people who started 50 companies would be maybe 1 or 2 companies, then I'd argue that he didn't only get lucky. I'd argue there's also a skill component to it.
Throwing away a brand almost everyone has heard of and verbs that have become common in spoken language because you own x.com is just incredibly stupid stuff.
The guy is surrounded by yes men.
Everyone seems to be missing the interesting part here.
It's that Twitter is using a generic Monotype font letter for their brand.
Which would mean that their brand will not be able to be trademarked and thus anyone could use it to associate their dodgy product with the main site. So I wouldn't worry about Meta, Microsoft etc but about the insane number of X ripoffs we are going to see in the future e.g. X crypto coin, X bots.
Monotype Executive Creative Director Phil Garnham Executive told The Messenger in a statement that the company “can confirm that whilst it is similar, this is not the capital X glyph from Monotype’s “Special Alphabets 4.”
Most people would probably agree that Musk made some very bad and rookie-looking decisions since acquiring Twitter. Also he has said a lot of very controversial things in the last 1-2 years.
Before that he arguably was a lot more well respected as an entrepreneur - keeping a lower profile and building a couple of extremely successful businesses in parallel.
My big question that I’m still searching for an answer to:
Did he drastically change as a person in the last couple of years? Or was he just “lucky” to build SpaceX and Tesla into tremendous successes? Or is he still a genius and all of us simply can’t see how he’s making Twitter into the next big success in his CV?
If he did change as a person - why? What happened? Bad breakup? Drug abuse? Depression? Too much self confidence? Too much stress for too long? Something else?
No one even mentions Google X which rebranded to just X years ago. Clearly it’s been effective that no one even points this out. Yet another winning project.
One interesting aspect is that trademarks have to be in use in order to be defended.
If Musk’s X moves away from the name “Twitter” and the bird logo as completely as they seem likely to, those will become essentially undefended trademarks that someone else could start using.
Want to found Twitter all over again?
There are ways (legal tricks) to rebrand while defending the old brand. But these require detailed legal advice, disciplined ops, and a will to do so. I’d say that it looks like Musk is lacking all three of those at X right now.
"Twitter was acquired by X Corp both to ensure freedom of speech and as an accelerant for X, the everything app. This is not simply a company renaming itself, but doing the same thing.
The Twitter name made sense when it was just 140 character messages going back and forth – like birds tweeting – but now you can post almost anything, including several hours of video.
In the months to come, we will add comprehensive communications and the ability to conduct your entire financial world. The Twitter name does not make sense in that context, so we must bid adieu to the bird."
It's interesting to examine this website with the thousands of trademarks for "X". Some are extremely stylized while others are just the letter X. Some are specific to particular colors. Some cover very narrow areas. Microsoft has a lot of trademarks here, but Apple shows up too.
Elon Musk also did own x.com in the 1990s. [1] It was sold, but he repurchased it several years ago and left the page to resolve to a simple "x" index. [2] This usage was before Microsoft's 2003 registration.
There is a german saying: "Satz mit X, war wohl nix." that comes to mind. Anti-Search Engine Optimisation. The world has really passed google by, if this is a valid option.
If it is just a trademark issue and not logo design, could Twitter just make it x.com? Elon made x.com in 1999. He could pitch it as a revival rather than simple X the company.
Bizarre that Zuck and Musk and I suppose "Goog" can have these spasms of inability to understand branding. Bezos needs a fit of it so we can rename Amazon to, uh, Fwoop. Why not.
This has to be the most moronic part of Elon's plan.
Firing everyone to improve operating margins, I understand that.
Iterating on features rapidly, even if they're not quite ready for prime time? That makes a lot of sense if you're trying to beat out the competition.
Rebranding your website and conference rooms? This sounds like a stupid waste of time and effort. If you wanted to create X the next twitter, just do a start up. Everyone would have signed up just because Elon Musk was using it. You didn't need to buy twitter for that.
[+] [-] AraceliHarker|2 years ago|reply
https://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=87980831&caseType=SERIAL_...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mixer_(service)
[+] [-] stingraycharles|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 255|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tim333|2 years ago|reply
I see lawsuits ahead.
[+] [-] smileysteve|2 years ago|reply
Apple owns X with OS X and the iPhone X.
Microsoft own Xbox's logo, with the console, store, game pass
[+] [-] dgellow|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xutopia|2 years ago|reply
Musk is showing the world that he got lucky with his previous ventures. His management of Twitter has been a display of poor management at every level.
If you were less than a year into your position as CEO of a company with revenue divided by half, ex-employees suing you, banned journalists from your platform in the middle of some half-thought-out free speech debate... would you not be fired?
Everything about this makes me think he's just too rich to be fired... anyone else would have been. He just owns too much to not be given any more chances.
[+] [-] hn_throwaway_99|2 years ago|reply
Don't really like this framing of the problem - he owns a majority of voting shares, and he paid (or, rather, overpaid) mightily for that right. You can't really be "fired" from being an owner, and I'll note Musk is no longer CEO (and, sure, you can argue the new CEO was hired to be the fall girl/glass cliff example, but that was still her eyes-wide-open choice).
People wrung their hands about Zuckerberg as well (he also has a majority of voting shares of Facebook), but in retrospect that hand-wringing looked premature, at least from a shareholder perspective - Meta is nearly back at its peak and has tripled its stock price from late 2022.
[+] [-] cameldrv|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] amarant|2 years ago|reply
I find it difficult to believe both SpaceX and Tesla was 100% pure luck and chance. Not even the devil is that lucky.
[+] [-] mettamage|2 years ago|reply
1 dud
A few successes
It's really hard to tell to what extent it's luck versus skill. It'd be much easier to tell if we'd live for 10K years and he'd have started like 50 companies. If even 10 of those would've become wildly successful, whereas the mean baseline of other people who started 50 companies would be maybe 1 or 2 companies, then I'd argue that he didn't only get lucky. I'd argue there's also a skill component to it.
[+] [-] ActionHank|2 years ago|reply
It just looks like an error or failure and completely out of place with the rest of the site.
[+] [-] wtetzner|2 years ago|reply
Or maybe he's finally stretched himself too thin, isn't getting enough sleep, etc.
[+] [-] Terretta|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] adastra22|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chaosbolt|2 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] renewiltord|2 years ago|reply
Patton? Luck merchant (Task Force Baum)
Eisenhower? Luck buffoon (kesserine pass)
Einstein? All luck (Cosmological constant, black holes perhaps)
With moronic clowns such as these it is truly a wonder that the Allies got anywhere.
Also, I think we should make it so if you own a company and it stops making money, it should be taken away from you.
[+] [-] PM_me_your_math|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dools|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] phpisthebest|2 years ago|reply
Personally if he wanted to make an "everything app" I would have gone with making X an "exclusive" edition of twitter, i.e replacing twitter blue.
Twitter is a free app for the unwashed masses and X is the Exclusive App.... if you login to twitter with a X login you get the rebrand
Then add new features to X
[+] [-] tenpies|2 years ago|reply
Tim Apples even saw this coming and had an emoji in place, Man Crossed Arms.
[+] [-] biftek|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kvetching|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Sosh101|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] threeseed|2 years ago|reply
It's that Twitter is using a generic Monotype font letter for their brand.
Which would mean that their brand will not be able to be trademarked and thus anyone could use it to associate their dodgy product with the main site. So I wouldn't worry about Meta, Microsoft etc but about the insane number of X ripoffs we are going to see in the future e.g. X crypto coin, X bots.
[+] [-] zgluck|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] NoZebra120vClip|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] trollied|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] speedgoose|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tim333|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mwidell|2 years ago|reply
Before that he arguably was a lot more well respected as an entrepreneur - keeping a lower profile and building a couple of extremely successful businesses in parallel.
My big question that I’m still searching for an answer to: Did he drastically change as a person in the last couple of years? Or was he just “lucky” to build SpaceX and Tesla into tremendous successes? Or is he still a genius and all of us simply can’t see how he’s making Twitter into the next big success in his CV?
If he did change as a person - why? What happened? Bad breakup? Drug abuse? Depression? Too much self confidence? Too much stress for too long? Something else?
[+] [-] minighost|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] snowwrestler|2 years ago|reply
If Musk’s X moves away from the name “Twitter” and the bird logo as completely as they seem likely to, those will become essentially undefended trademarks that someone else could start using.
Want to found Twitter all over again?
There are ways (legal tricks) to rebrand while defending the old brand. But these require detailed legal advice, disciplined ops, and a will to do so. I’d say that it looks like Musk is lacking all three of those at X right now.
[+] [-] z7|2 years ago|reply
"Twitter was acquired by X Corp both to ensure freedom of speech and as an accelerant for X, the everything app. This is not simply a company renaming itself, but doing the same thing.
The Twitter name made sense when it was just 140 character messages going back and forth – like birds tweeting – but now you can post almost anything, including several hours of video.
In the months to come, we will add comprehensive communications and the ability to conduct your entire financial world. The Twitter name does not make sense in that context, so we must bid adieu to the bird."
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1683656350046232578
[+] [-] kens|2 years ago|reply
https://trademarks.justia.com/search?q=X
[+] [-] World177|2 years ago|reply
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/19991114130555/http://x.com/mana...
[2] https://web.archive.org/web/20230401142845/http://x.com/
[+] [-] HWR_14|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nashashmi|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wodenokoto|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] croisillon|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] falcolas|2 years ago|reply
Now then, of course Musk can challenge it, and given his domain ownership, possibly successfully even.
But given the scads of lawyers who Musk owes money to, yet is not paying, who will take the fight on?
[+] [-] mywittyname|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] omoikane|2 years ago|reply
But I suspect what will happen is people will continue to call it Twitter and the X name will not stick.
[+] [-] sparrowInHand|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dmix|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] abhinavk|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ergonaught|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] blobbers|2 years ago|reply
Firing everyone to improve operating margins, I understand that.
Iterating on features rapidly, even if they're not quite ready for prime time? That makes a lot of sense if you're trying to beat out the competition.
Rebranding your website and conference rooms? This sounds like a stupid waste of time and effort. If you wanted to create X the next twitter, just do a start up. Everyone would have signed up just because Elon Musk was using it. You didn't need to buy twitter for that.
Just stupid.
[+] [-] romanovcode|2 years ago|reply
Maybe he should trademark this unicode character instead of letter "X".
[+] [-] svag|2 years ago|reply