After weeks of changes to its social handles, branding on its interface, a redirect on the web and lots of chatter from its owner, Twitter the app has finally changed its name on the App Store to X. The single-letter name may have an exception: Apple typically doesn’t allow developers to name their apps as a single character.
Last week, Twitter rebranded its iOS and Android apps, replacing the old bird logo, and screenshots in the App Store, with the new “X” logo. However, the company wasn’t able to change its actual listed name on the App Store. As developers pointed out, this is because the App Store Connect — the portal that lets developers manage their apps — shows an error when developers try to use just one character as the app name.
Despite that, today Apple seems finally to have granted Elon Musk’s X Corp. — the official owner of Twitter — an exception to have a single-letter app name. We have reached out to Apple for a comment, and we’ll update the story if we hear back.
X also changed its App Store tagline from “Let’s talk.” to “Blaze Your Glory!!” It’s not clear what that means. Musk himself posted a tweet with this tagline without any context.
Blaze Your Glory!!
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 31, 2023
In contrast, Twitter’s rebranding on Android faced no roadblocks as the app changed the name to X along with the logo swap earlier.
Over the weekend, another app named X — which was using X along with another standard but invisible character in its name to get around Apple’s character limits — was renamed. The app description now reads “[We are not affiliated with Twitter/X and will soon give our app a new name].” The developers of the app told TechCrunch that this change was voluntary. They said Twitter/X or Apple didn’t reach out to them.
The app that was named “X” because of Unicode characters recently has been rebranded to “Note” an hour ago.
Curious if the app title update resulted from litigation by Twitter, or if it was a simpler decision to avoid going viral on social media as "X."
Musk lacks absolute IP… https://t.co/HUvOCGTN14 pic.twitter.com/ikcklnIz7x
— Nick (@nickjsheriff) July 29, 2023
Last week, TechCrunch reported that X took over the @x handle without any warning to its original owner. The company didn’t compensate the user and just offered him a selection of X merchandise and a tour of X’s HQ, as a “reflection of our appreciation.”
X is also in the process of renaming its subscription service from Twitter Blue to X Blue. The company now mentions on the support page that the subscription service allows users to upload up to three hours of video — extending the previous limit of two hours set in May.
Last week, X also expanded its ad revenue-sharing program globally after giving creators $5 million in the first round of payments. To earn, however, you must pay and play to cash in: To be eligible, creators have to be verified; need at least 500 followers; and they also must have accrued 15 million total impressions from across their posts in the last three months.
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