Following Twitter’s rebrand to X this week, iPhone models with the old Twitter icon are being listed online for thousands of dollars as somewhat of a “collectors item.”
This week, Twitter officially updated its app on iPhone and Android with a new X icon and name, ditching the iconic bird that had served the platform for years. The new name is part of an ongoing rebrand spearheaded by X’s CTO Elon Musk in his effort to turn the platform into the “everything app,” including a financial hub.
The new app name and icon were rolled out to users via an App Store update, which prompted many users to ditch updating their Twitter app entirely to retain the old branding. Somewhat half-seriously, iPhones with the previous Twitter app are now being sold on eBay for thousands of dollars. Users on X have also joined in on the trend.
A similar sequence of events took place with the hit game Flappy Bird, which was removed from the App Store and Google Play Store following concerns the game was addictive in 2014. Following its removal, smartphones with the game still installed started selling online. In one instance, an iPhone 5 with the game still installed was selling for $100,000. On one listing on eBay, an iPhone 11 Pro Max with the Twitter app installed is being priced at $25,000, with other listings around the $800-$1,000 mark.
Twitter’s push to rename itself to X is still underway. The platform is transiting towards calling tweets “posts” and retweets “reposts.” X.com already redirects users to Twitter, but the platform is still hosted on the original Twitter domain. X employees have said they’re working hard to migrate the platform over to the X.com domain for good.
