Elon Musk is holding a second garage sale, this time offering for sale all of the discarded Twitter-related items from the X headquarters.
There are presently over 600 items up for auction, including neon signs displaying the Twitter bird, a giant hashtag, and the @ symbol. It also includes branded furniture such as a wooden Twitter bird coffee table and a bird cage sofa glider.
Fans of Twitter who are feeling sentimental due to Musk’s rebranding of the social platform will have ample time to peruse the items. The auction will begin on September 12 and conclude on September 14.
Similar to Twitter’s last auction at the start of this year, this new auction consists primarily of office furniture and electronics that X apparently no longer needs. It also includes a 24-record collection titled “Twitter Essentials” and a record player, suggesting that the X offices are attempting to muffle more than just tweeting birds.
It is difficult to estimate how much X could receive for this collection of items. The highest bid at Twitter’s most recent auction was $100,000 for a three-foot Twitter avian statue.
Twitter bird signs still affixed to the X building are among the items in the current auction that could garner high bids. The listings for the two signs indicate that the birds are “still mounted on the side of the building.” According to the listings, buyers will be responsible for engaging a licensed San Francisco company with the proper permits to remove the iconic signs.
A painting of a selfie captured by Ellen DeGeneres at the 2014 Academy Awards is another nostalgic item for longtime Twitter users. The Guardian reported that at one point, this photograph was “the most retweeted message of all time.”
The auction is a result of Twitter’s rebranding, which has caused some Twitter users to experience confusion. Throughout the platform, Twitter’s branding has remained prevalent throughout the chaos of the X brand rollout. It appears that X is still attempting to eradicate all references to Twitter, tweets, and retweets from the platform. Nonetheless, the Twitter brand is being gradually eroded day by day.
X is in; Twitter is out
Musk has long stated that acquiring Twitter was intended to expedite the launch of X, his “everything app.” By completing this rebranding and replacing the Twitter app on all mobile devices with X, Musk demonstrates his commitment to transforming the microblogging app into an irresistibly convenient platform where users can text, call, pay, shop, finance, and post online.
The concept of developing a comprehensive app that is accessible in the United States has been deemed ambitious by experts. Even if Musk is able to convince millions of people to use one app instead of the preferred applications already installed on their phones, regulators could pose significant obstacles for X, as antitrust scrutiny of tech companies and the financial sector has been increasing.
Musk has stated in the past that he could transform Twitter into X, the everything app, within five years of acquiring the company, despite less optimistic predictions. And he has recently implemented what he has indicated will be a key component in accomplishing this objective: paying X users to post on the platform.
The Verge reported yesterday that X’s ad revenue sharing program has begun paying users who earn $10 or more by creating popular posts that receive at least 5 million impressions in three months.
The appeal of X as an app for everything is that users will feel rewarded for using the app. Musk stated that by lowering the minimal payout to $10, “X Premium (formerly Twitter Blue) is essentially free for accounts that generate over 5 million views.”
Since X Premium costs at least $7 per month, therefore three months would cost $21, the reasoning does not appear to be sound. However, this demonstrates how Musk is strategizing to convince users to purchase X and become more motivated to share popular content on the platform.
Musk announced another aspect of Twitter’s rebranding in the same post: the renaming of Twitter Blue subscriptions to X Premium subscriptions. This rebranding endeavor is so recent that when Ars searched “X Premium cost,” Google only returned results for an e-bike and a Wix plan with the same name.
X tools assuage brand safety concerns
During the rebranding of Twitter to X, a significant effort has been made to assuage advertisers’ residual brand safety concerns following the Twitter Blue imposter scandal and reports of rising hate speech on the platform. AP reported that X CEO Linda Yaccarino is attempting to alter this. And earlier this month, X filed a lawsuit against the researchers who propagated the most prominent claims that hate speech frightens advertisers.
Yaccarino reportedly spent the last eight weeks meeting with major brands who are still hesitant to advertise on the X platform. Yaccarino stated in an interview with CNBC that Coca-Cola, State Farm, and Visa were among the brands she was actively cultivating.
In that interview, Yaccarino asserted that some brands are prepared to return to X, in part due to new content tools that allow advertisers to control what appears alongside branded posts. She also verified her continued support for Musk’s vision for the everything app.
“Elon has been talking about X, the everything app, for a very long time,” Yaccarino reported to CNBC. “Even when we announced that I would be joining the company, it was with the intention of partnering with Elon to transform Twitter into X, the everything app.”
Yaccarino referred to Musk’s rebranding of X as his “liberation from Twitter.” She stated that the rebranding enabled the company to move away from Twitter’s former mindset and products, thereby preparing X users for new types of experiences on the platform.
“Think about what’s happened since the acquisition,” Yaccarino told CNBC. “Subscribe to your beloved creators, who are now making a living wage on the platform, based on their long-form video and article experiences. Soon, you will be able to make video chat conversations without sharing your phone number with anyone on the platform.
While some experts assert that launching an app for everything is probably impossible, Yaccarino appears to have no patience for dissenters as he rushes to make an everything app a reality.
“At X, we think about what’s possible,” Yaccarino told CNBC. “Not the incremental change of what can’t be done.”