So What Do We Call Twitter Now Anyway?

With a simple name change, Elon Musk has created confusion in social media.

The bewilderment stems from Mr. Musk’s move last month to rebrand Twitter, which he owns, as X. No major social media app has undergone such a name change before, at least while it had tens of millions of active users.

In 2016, Snapchat dropped “chat” from its corporate name, but kept the app’s name unchanged. When Facebook changed its parent company name to Meta in 2021, it also left the name of its flagship social network alone.

The rebranding has been hair-raising for Twitter fans, who embraced the company’s iconic blue-and-white bird logo and used a bird-related lexicon when talking about the platform. A tweet referred to a post; tweeting was a verb for posting, and sharing another person’s post was known as retweeting.

Some people have wondered if the X name will stick, especially with the word tweets still appearing on the site. The app’s home button is also still shaped like a birdhouse, and the company’s website — at least for now — remains Twitter.com.

So is the Twitter name retired? And do we now call a tweet a “xeet” or “xcerpt”?

Really, what do we call Twitter now?

Sorry, die-hard Twitter fans, it’s X.

X said its app would definitively be called X going forward. In marketing copy, the company declared, “The X app is the trusted digital town square for everyone.” The app has a new slogan, too: “Blaze your glory!” (Twitter’s previous tag lines included “Let’s talk” and “It’s what’s happening.”)