CivicScience: Survey shows 36% of daily Twitter users are positive about name changes

When Musk announced the rebranding of Twitter as X last weekend, complaints echoed across the social media platform. One marketing expert called it "completely irrational." However, a new poll suggests the move may not be as bad as people think.

An online survey conducted by CivicScience, which received more than 5,000 responses, including more than 1,000 from Twitter users, showed that people who do not use Twitter disliked the rebrand, while those who frequently use the platform gave more positive feedback.

Nearly a third of respondents said they had a negative reaction to the rebrand, compared with 14 percent who had a positive reaction.

However, when focusing on the respondents who were active Twitter users in the past six months, the results were different. According to CivicScience, 36% of daily Twitter users viewed the change positively, while 27% viewed it negatively. 43% of weekly users viewed the change positively, while 27% viewed it negatively.

There's even some positive news from users of Twitter competitor Threads. Nearly a third of users who have used or tried Threads say they're very interested in using X, and another 28% are somewhat interested, according to a CivicScience survey. Overall, 60% of users who have used or tried Threads are interested in X.

Of course, the scope of the survey is limited. Twitter has about 250 million daily users, and the CivicScience survey results come from a few thousand people. Musk also has a passionate fan base, so some of them may have answered the survey and skewed the results. These results also suggest that X is not about to embark on a massive growth spurt.

"Interestingly, non-users were most likely to view the change as negative — so at least at this point, X is unlikely to attract a surplus of new users," CivicScience wrote in a blog about the poll results.

The future of X, which could include new features such as banking services, also doesn't look too rosy, according to the survey.

40% of Twitter's daily users and 51% of weekly users are currently not interested in using X's anticipated new features, "so the move is likely to be disruptive," CivicScience concluded.