BUSINESS INSIDER
When Elon Musk unveiled the X rebranding of Twitter earlier this week, howls of complaint echoed across the social-media platform. A marketing expert called it “completely irrational.”
A new poll suggests the move might not be so awful.
CivicScience conducted an online survey after the X announcement and got more than 5,000 responses, including over 1,000 responses from Twitter users. The results showed that people who don’t use Twitter didn’t like the rebranding. Those who do use the platform were more positive.
Almost a third of all those who responded to the poll said they had a negative reaction to the rebrand. That compared to 14% who felt positively.
However, when focusing on current Twitter users who have been active on the platform over the last six months, the results were different: 36% of daily users were positive about the change, while 27% felt negative. 43% of weekly users were positive about the change, while 27% were negative, according to CivicScience.
There’s even some positive news regarding Threads, Meta’s recently launched Twitter rival. Nearly a third of those who use or have tried Threads expressed high interest in using X, while an additional 28% were somewhat interested. Overall, 60% of those who use or have tried Threads are interested in X, according to CivicScience’s polling.
To be sure, the survey findings are limited in scope. There are roughly 250 million daily average users of Twitter, and CivicScience’s poll got results from a few thousand people. Musk also has a passionate fanbase, so some of those people may have answered the survey and skewed the findings. The results also suggest that Twitter is not about to embark on a massive growth spurt.
“Interestingly, non-users are the most likely to think the change is negative – so at least at this point, it’s unlikely X is going to draw a surplus of new users,” CivicScience wrote in a blog about the poll results.
The future of X, which might include new features such as banking services, is also not looking so hopeful, according to the survey.
40% of daily Twitter users and a 51% of weekly users are not currently interested in using X with its expected new features, “so the move is likely to be disruptive,” CivicScience reported.
