Elon Musk could need to ship “tweet” again to the birds, however the ubiquitous time period for posting on the location he now calls X is right here to remain – no less than for now. For one, the phrase continues to be plastered all around the web site previously generally known as Twitter. Write a submit, you continue to have to 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 completed in a lifetime: It grew to become a verb and implanted itself into the lexicon of 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 all the time come from the those that apply it to a day-to-day foundation. And it might’t be managed, it might’t created, it might’t be morphed. You do not get to resolve it,” mentioned Nick Bilton, the creator 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.
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Twitter co-founder Evan Williams “went in the future and bought the vowels, two vowels for basically USD 7,500 every,” when he purchased the URL for twitter.com from a fowl 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 in all places.
We have been tweeting for nicely over a decade. World leaders, celebrities and athletes, dissidents in repressive regimes, propaganda trolls, intercourse employees and spiritual icons, meme queens and precise queens.
Former president Donald Trump’s incendiary use of the fowl app shortly 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 typically 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.
“Moving into the dictionary is a sign that individuals are already utilizing it,” mentioned Jack Lynch, a Rutgers College English professor who research the historical past of language.
“Dictionaries are often 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 fowl 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 fowl emblem for Twitter, however it will be probably the most enduring.
“They knew they needed a fowl. So we weren’t beginning fully over, however they needed it to be on par with Apple and Nike. That was actually the temporary,” he mentioned.
Twitter launched Grasser’s design in Could 2012; the corporate went public on Wall Avenue later that 12 months.
One early in-house design proven to Grasser appeared like “a flying goose with a tail. It appeared form of like a dragon. It was loopy,” he mentioned. Jack Dorsey, one other co-founder (and twice-CEO) needed one thing easier.
The fowl 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 fowl even being kind of turned upward, as corny as that sounds, I believe is completely different than a fowl flying down or flat,” he mentioned. “We needed to provide 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 “Buddy Stalker.”
It was Noah Glass, one other co-founder who by no means fairly bought the credit score he deserved for his position in hatching Twitter, who had the successful concept.
Glass, Bilton mentioned, “had been serious about like heartbeats and feelings. He was going by means of a divorce and he actually went by means of 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 favour 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 by means of firings, layoffs and voluntary departures, auctioned off furnishings and decor, 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 almost 1 / 4 century in the past after he bought his first startup, Zip2, to Compaq Pc.
He got down to create a one-stop digital store for finance referred to as X.com – an “every part” 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 in keeping with Musk’s different X-named manufacturers, SpaceX and Tesla’s Mannequin X. To not point out his younger son, whom he calls “X.”
His aim for X is to show it into an “every part” app – for video, pictures, messaging, funds and different providers, though he has given few particulars.
For now, X.com continues to be, basically Twitter.com, even because the blue fowl and different playful tidbits begin to disappear.
“There was once a saying inside Twitter that Twitter was the corporate that could not kill itself. I believe that also rings true, whether or not it is referred to as Twitter or X,” Bilton mentioned.
“I believe that it is form of turn out to be a material of society. And even Elon Musk could not be capable of break it.”