What Is Twitter Called Now and What Changed for Business

The short version: Twitter is now called X, the rebrand happened under Elon Musk's ownership, and the name is the least important part of the story for businesses. What changed is verification, reach mechanics, advertiser trust and what you get for paying. If you're still running your marketing plan like it's 2021, you're wasting budget.

So what is it called

X. Just X. Not "X, formerly Twitter", not "the app formerly known as Twitter" forever, just X. The bird logo is gone, replaced with a black X on a white or black background. The rebrand happened in July 2023, so by 2026 it's not news, it's just the name, and if your team is still writing "Twitter" in client reports you look out of touch rather than nostalgic.

The web address changed too. x.com is now the primary domain, though twitter.com still redirects there. Tweets are officially called "posts" now, though almost everyone, including people who work there, still says "tweet" out of habit. Retweets became "reposts". None of this matters for your bottom line. What follows does.

What changed for businesses

Here's where it gets practical. Four things shifted hard enough to change how you should be using the platform.

• Verification is now for sale, not for status. The old blue tick meant "this account is confirmed as who it says it is", usually for journalists, public figures and recognised brands. Now anyone can buy it through X Premium. That changes trust signals completely, because a blue check next to a brand name no longer tells your customer anything except that someone paid.
• Algorithm favours paying accounts. Posts from X Premium subscribers get measurable reach boosts over free accounts. If you run a small business account and you're not subscribed, you're competing with one hand tied behind your back against competitors who are.
• Advertiser exodus changed the ad landscape. Several major advertisers pulled back spending after 2023 over brand safety concerns, which means ad costs and auction dynamics shifted. For some niches that meant cheaper CPMs because there's less competition for ad slots; for others it meant less confidence that ads sit next to content they'd want their brand near.
• The API got expensive. Free API access for building tools, bots, and scheduling integrations was cut back hard, and paid tiers start in the hundreds of dollars a month for meaningful access. If your business relied on free automation tools to manage your X presence, several of them either shut down or started charging you directly to cover their own new costs.

A worked example: the bakery that kept doing what always worked

Say you run a small bakery chain with three locations and 4,200 followers on X. Before the rebrand, your strategy was simple: post photos of the daily specials, reply to customers, run the occasional retweet giveaway. It worked fine because the algorithm was roughly chronological and reach was predictable.

Now the same posting pattern gets a fraction of the impressions it used to, not because your content got worse but because the feed is ranked, and ranking rewards X Premium subscribers, video content, and posts that get fast replies in the first ten minutes. If you keep posting the same still photo at the same time with the same caption style, your reach can drop by half or more within a few months without you doing anything wrong on the content side.

The fix isn't complicated: subscribe to Premium for the reach boost, which currently costs around $8 a month for the basic tier, switch some posts to short video since that format gets prioritised, and reply to your own post within the first few minutes to kickstart engagement signals. None of that is a secret, it's just a different game than the one you learned the platform on.

The uncomfortable bit nobody wants to say out loud

Here's what most business advice skips: X is a smaller, noisier, less predictable platform than it was, and for a meaningful chunk of small businesses, the honest answer is that it's no longer worth the time it takes to post consistently. If your audience is B2B and leans toward LinkedIn, or your audience is visual and lives on Instagram, pouring hours into X because "we've always had a presence there" is sunk cost thinking, not strategy. I'd rather see a business owner post three times a week somewhere their customers reply than chase a platform out of habit. Keep the account for brand protection and customer service, sure, but don't pretend it's still the discovery engine it was for some industries.

That said, for certain sectors X still earns its keep: tech, finance, politics, journalism, and customer service for travel and telecoms brands all still see real engagement there. If that's you, the platform is worth the investment. If it's not, don't feel guilty about scaling back.

What to do with your business account now

If you're keeping X as part of your mix, a few practical steps matter more than they used to.

• Update your header image to the current recommended dimensions so it doesn't look stretched or cropped; the specs changed slightly post-rebrand, and a quick X header size guide will save you the trial and error.
• Check your bio link is still clickable and pointing somewhere current, since broken or outdated bio links are a wasted click every single visitor gives you; here's a clear walkthrough on adding a clickable link to your X bio.
• Decide deliberately whether X Premium is worth it for your account, not just because everyone else has the tick; the actual feature list for business accounts is worth reading before you pay, and this breakdown of what X Premium gives a business account covers it.
• If you're automating posting or hit errors pulling data via API tools, understand the new limits before you assume your tool is broken; this explainer on what a rate limit exceeded message means clears up the confusion.

And if you're rebuilding your whole small business marketing plan for the platform from scratch, start with the fundamentals rather than chasing every feature change, this guide to using X for small business marketing is a sensible place to begin.

Where this fits in your wider channel mix

I'd treat X the same way I treat any channel that's gone through upheaval: judge it on numbers, not nostalgia. Pull your last 90 days of posts, check impressions and click-throughs against the time you spent, and compare that to what the same hours produce on another channel. If you're also managing customer messages across platforms, it's worth knowing that other messaging channels have shifted too, including the changes in the latest WhatsApp Business update for customer chats, which affects a lot of the same small businesses juggling X alongside everything else.

The name change was cosmetic. The business changes underneath it were not. Don't let the rebrand distract you from the actual decision, which is whether this platform, as it exists now, deserves your time.

Frequently asked questions

Is Twitter still called Twitter in 2026?

No, it's been called X since July 2023, and by 2026 the rebrand is fully settled; the app, website and branding all use X, though many users still say "tweet" out of habit.

Do businesses need to pay for X now to be seen?

Not strictly, but X Premium subscribers get a measurable reach boost in the algorithm, so unpaid business accounts are competing at a disadvantage against competitors who subscribe.

Is X worth it for small businesses in 2026?

It depends heavily on your sector; tech, finance, travel, customer service and news-adjacent businesses still see solid engagement, while visual or B2B brands often get better returns elsewhere.

What happened to Twitter's free API for businesses?

Free API access was largely removed, and paid tiers now start in the hundreds of dollars a month, which broke or forced price changes on many free scheduling and automation tools that businesses relied on.