Twitter becomes ‘X’ - what it means for dentists...

Since buying Twitter last year for $44 billion, new owner, Elon Musk, has spent more than a little time tinkering under the bonnet. The most obvious change to Twitter is a recent rebranding - Twitter is now known simply as ‘X’. No joke.

Never one to think small, it seems Musk might have had this grand plan for Twitter brewing for years. He was an early owner of X.com (a matching domain name is essential to support the brand) which was his first company before he went on to co-found PayPal and make his fortune.

Musk sold X.com, but bought it back in 2017, well before his 2022 acquisition of Twitter.

So, what has changed in X from when it was Twitter and how can dentists use this to their advantage?

To understand what’s changed, we need to look at what was there previously. Historically, Twitter was good for short messaging - “tweeting” - with strict character limits in place - just 140 initially. However, X users can now engage in live audio conversations, send longer text messages and even broadcast video. However, Musk (who also founded SpaceX and Tesla) clearly has big plans for X.

In fact, he is on record as saying that he aims to make X a kind of super-app, which includes basically anything users want to do online.

Bottom line: For dentists, X is a case of “watch this space”. With change comes opportunity and the changed functionality in X could easily lead to more users and more opportunities to get your dental message out there.

However, just because there is additional functionality in an app does not mean that users will embrace the change. Indeed, use of Twitter/X has declined by 25% since Musk’s purchase.

If Musk’s super-app plan does gain traction, then more eyeballs means more opportunity. But beware of shiny objects; it’s better to do one form of social media well than spread yourself too thinly.