Innovation

James Francis

Pour one out for twitter.com. The domain has been retired after just two years of playing second fiddle to X.com, the rebranding following Elon Musk's purchase of the microblogging site in 2022. I guess ego gets ahead of good branding, replacing the vibrant blue bird and catchy name with a generic X and what feels like a placeholder domain, not a memorable brand. Twitter, at least, has a sense of purpose, like birds nattering, while X...I don't know what that represents. Still, data speaks louder, and according to Semrush, twitter.com has been losing out to x.com, drawing around 900mn visits in September compared to the latter's 3.6bn. So, X is finally retiring the twitter.com domain, at least for core services like security authentication.

Prior to the buyout, Twitter was languishing as the only significant fish in the microblogging pond, with management indulging politics more than innovation. Musk's takeover made the politicking worse, muzzling dissenting voices and releasing biased AI that strives to appease its polarising owner over providing objective value to users. But the site also evolved, adding much-needed features, putting most of them behind paywalls to compensate for its lagging ad business.