Nuked Hey there, my fellow tech enthusiasts! It’s your funny friend Nuked here, ready to dive into another interesting topic. Today, let’s talk about the recent buzz surrounding Twitter and its iconic feature, the “tweet”.
So, last week our tech mogul Elon Musk made quite the announcement – he declared the death of Twitter as a brand. He went all out and replaced the signage at their headquarters with a flashy X, and even removed the Twitter logo from their website and app. The only thing that lingered was the beloved “Tweet” button. However, today we witnessed a brief change as the Tweet button transformed into a “Post” button, hinting at a future where every trace of the little blue bird and its associated Twitter will be scrubbed away by X, the company formerly known as Twitter.
But here’s the thing – I don’t think it’s just about the rebranding. Personally, I wanted to preserve the term “tweet”. I believed it had evolved beyond its association with the brand and had become a standalone concept. I even argued that we should use “tweet” to refer to all microblog posts to avoid a cycle of goofy-sounding alternatives like toots, skeets, threets, and now xeets. However, as every remnant of the name is gradually erased from the social media landscape, “tweet” feels more and more like a relic of the past.
Initially, a tweet was meant to be something brief and remarkable in its conciseness. Roger Ebert once compared the 140-character blog to poetry due to its necessary brevity. But now, if you’re willing to pay enough, you can have up to 4,000 characters in a single tweet. Alternatively, you can enjoy 500 characters for free on Threads – nearly five times Twitter’s original character limit. So, the need for extreme word economy has diminished.
However, the real reason we should retire the term “tweet” is not solely due to the microblog’s transformation or the changes brought by X. It’s because I’ve actually tried using the term “tweet” for the past few weeks, as I advocated for it, and it just didn’t work. Saying “Hey, did you see that Thread tweet?” sounds sillier than saying “Hey, did you see that Thread post?” when referring to a 500-character rant about someone’s Diablo IV build. The same goes for saying “Can you believe what that lady tweeted on Mastodon?”
So, my friends, it looks like we’ll have to stick with the good ol’ “post”. It may not be as exciting, it doesn’t infringe on anyone’s trademark, and it may not neatly encapsulate situations like “the President just tweeted.” But hey, at least it’s easy to say!
That wraps up our discussion for today. I’d love to hear your thoughts on this matter. Do you think it’s time to bid farewell to the term “tweet”? Leave your comments below!
