Blue bird uncaged?

livemint.com:

Talk about changes at Twitter, and the biggest one may not yet have come. The blue bird, synonymous with the micro-blog platform, now seems set to be uncaged as Elon Musk overhauls his $44 billion purchase.

“And soon we shall bid adieu to the Twitter brand and, gradually, all the birds," he tweeted on Sunday. “If a good enough X logo is posted tonight," he added, it may be taken live on Monday.

A rebranding exercise appears underway, although the mercurial manner in which Twitter appears to be run means it’s never easy to guess what’s next. The timing suggests it’s a defensive response to Meta’s launch of Threads, a “cage fight" that could make its micro-blog monopoly wobble.

A flight of users to this new rival would depend on Threads’ ability to generate user-get-user network effects, which, while clearly boosted by Meta’s Instagram reach, is still its big challenge. A potential truce could take the shape of both platforms turning interoperable for a mega-sized joint network and shared gains.

This could yield a social media giant that anti-trust authorities would have to take a grim view of. Even tacit cooperation will need watching, no matter how noisy this online fight gets.