Elon Musk could wish to ship “tweet” again to the birds, however the ubiquitous time period for posting on the positioning he now calls X is right here to remain — not less than for now.
For one, the phrase remains to be plastered all around the web site previously often known as Twitter. Write a put up, you continue to must press a blue button that claims “tweet” to publish it. To repost it, you continue to faucet “retweet.”
However it’s greater than that.
With “tweets,” Twitter achieved in only a few years one thing few firms have performed in a lifetime: It grew to become a verb and implanted itself into the lexicon of America and the world. Upending that takes greater than a top-down declaration, even whether it is from the proprietor of Twitter-turned-X, who additionally occurs to be one of many world’s richest males.
“Language has at all times come from the folks that apply it to a day-to-day foundation. And it could’t be managed, it could’t be created, it could’t be morphed. You aren’t getting to resolve it,” mentioned Nick Bilton, the writer of “Hatching Twitter: A True Story of Cash, Energy, Friendship, and Betrayal” about Twitter’s origins.
Twitter did not begin out as Twitter. It was “twttr” — with out vowels, which was the pattern in 2006 when the platform launched and SMS texting was wildly common. The iPhone solely got here out in 2007.
Twitter co-founder Evan Williams “went sooner or later and bought the vowels, two vowels for basically $7,500 every,” when he purchased the URL for twitter.com from a hen fanatic, Bilton mentioned.
Initially, folks did not “tweet” — it was “I will twitter this,” Bilton recalled. However “twittered” would not roll off the tongue and “tweet” quickly took over, first within the Twitter workplace, then San Francisco, then all over the place.
We have been tweeting for effectively over a decade. World leaders, celebrities and athletes, dissidents in repressive regimes, propaganda trolls. intercourse staff and non secular icons, meme queens and precise queens. Former President Donald Trump’s incendiary use of the hen app rapidly punted “tweet” into near-constant headlines throughout his presidency. Individuals who by no means signed up for Twitter knew what the phrase meant.
For now, we nonetheless tweet, retweet and quote tweet, and generally — maybe not usually sufficient — delete tweets. Information websites embed tweets of their tales and TV packages scroll them. No different social community has a phrase for posting that is entered the vernacular like “tweet” — although Google did the identical for “googling.”
The Oxford English Dictionary added “tweet” in 2011. Merriam-Webster adopted in 2013. The Related Press Stylebook entered it in 2010.
“Entering into the dictionary is a sign that persons are already utilizing it,” mentioned Jack Lynch, a Rutgers College English professor who research the historical past of language. “Dictionaries are normally fairly tentative or cautious about letting new phrases in, particularly for brand spanking new phenomena, as a result of they do not need issues to be only a flash within the pan.”
As Twitter grew into a world communications platform and struggled with misinformation, trolls and hate speech, its pleasant model picture remained. The blue hen icon evokes a smile, just like the Amazon up-turned-arrow smile — in distinction to the X that Musk has imposed.
Martin Grasser was two years out of artwork faculty when Twitter employed him for the brand redesign in 2011. His wasn’t the primary hen emblem for Twitter, however it might be probably the most enduring.
“They knew they needed a hen. So we weren’t beginning fully over, however they needed it to be on par with Apple and Nike. That was actually the transient,” he mentioned.
Twitter launched Grasser’s design in Might 2012; the corporate went public on Wall Road later that yr.
One early in-house design proven to Grasser appeared like “a flying goose with a tail. It appeared type of like a dragon. It was loopy,” he mentioned. Jack Dorsey, one other co-founder (and twice-CEO) needed one thing less complicated.
The hen represented a imaginative and prescient of Twitter as a pleasant place “the place everybody can weigh in and chat,” Grasser mentioned.
“The spherical kind evokes a way of optimism, the hen even being type of turned upward, as corny as that sounds, I feel is totally different than a hen flying down or flat,” he mentioned. “We needed to offer it this concept of like hovering.″
The phrase “Twitter” itself is playful, as is “tweet.” This was no accident, Bilton mentioned.
Different names that floated because the platform began out included “Standing” and “Good friend Stalker.”
It was Noah Glass, one other co-founder who by no means fairly obtained the credit score he deserved for his function in hatching Twitter, who had the successful concept.
Glass, Bilton mentioned, “had been interested by like heartbeats and feelings. He was going via a divorce and he actually went via the dictionary phrase by phrase till he got here throughout the phrase twitter. And he simply knew immediately that was it.”
“He was one of many 4 founders who had the emotional intelligence to have the ability to perceive that this was about connecting with people,” Bilton mentioned. “It was inviting, it was emotional. It was about connecting with people and your mates and your family members.”
Musk started his quest erasing Twitter’s company tradition and picture in favor of his personal imaginative and prescient as quickly as he took over the corporate in October 2022. He misplaced three-quarters of the corporate’s workers via firings, layoffs and voluntary departures, auctioned off furnishings and décor, and upended insurance policies on hate speech and misinformation. The rebranding to X was no shock.
Twitter’s rebranding is rooted in ambition that Musk started to pursue practically 1 / 4 century in the past after he bought his first startup, Zip2, to Compaq Laptop. He got down to create a one-stop digital store for finance known as X.com — an “every little thing” service that would offer financial institution accounts, course of funds, make loans and deal with investments.
He has not given up on the dream. Twitter is now X, falling according to Musk’s different X-named manufacturers, SpaceX and Tesla’s Mannequin X. To not point out his younger son, whom he calls “X.”
His objective for X is to show it into an “every little thing” app — for video, pictures, messaging, funds and different companies, though he has given few particulars. For now, X.com remains to be, basically Twitter.com, even because the blue hen and different playful tidbits begin to disappear.
“There was a saying inside Twitter that Twitter was the corporate that could not kill itself. I feel that also rings true, whether or not it is known as Twitter or X,” Bilton mentioned.
“I feel that it is type of develop into a material of society. And even Elon Musk could not be capable to break it.”
