Latest news with #Ditchit
San Francisco Chronicle
9 hours ago
- Business
- San Francisco Chronicle
Twitter bird logo from S.F. headquarters detonated in Nevada desert stunt
One of the two original 560-pound Twitter bird logos that once perched atop the company's Market Street headquarters in San Francisco has met a fiery end, courtesy of an upstart online marketplace. The 12-foot-tall bird sign, affectionately known as 'Larry' (a nod to Boston Celtics legend Larry Bird), was auctioned off earlier this year for $34,000. Its buyer, Ditchit — a rival to OfferUp and Facebook Marketplace — didn't preserve the Silicon Valley artifact. Instead, the company detonated it in the Nevada desert as part of a marketing campaign. According to Engadget, Ditchit enlisted a 15-person production crew, four Tesla Cybertrucks, and a Hollywood pyrotechnics expert to stage and film the explosion at a private 'adventure park' near Las Vegas. The resulting YouTube video, released Tuesday, attempts to draw a symbolic link between Elon Musk's rebranding of Twitter to X and Ditchit's mission to shake up online classifieds. 'Elon Musk rebranded Twitter to X to support free expression,' the video states. 'We're doing the same for local marketplaces.' The giant emblem once loomed over Jessie Street and became a defining symbol of Twitter during its most influential years. It was removed after Musk's rebranding marked the official end of the platform's blue bird era.
Engadget
13 hours ago
- Business
- Engadget
The 560-pound Twitter sign met a fiery end in a Nevada desert
To view this content, you'll need to update your privacy settings. Please click here and view the "Content and social-media partners" setting to do so. Earlier this year, the 12-foot tall, 560-pound Twitter logo that used to sit atop the company's San Francisco headquarters was auctioned off for $34,000. Now, we know who bought it and what became of the sign: it was blown up in the Nevada desert as part of an elaborate stunt to promote an online marketplace app. In some ways, "Larry," as the blue Twitter bird was known to former employees, met an end that mirrors the death of the social media platform it once represented: an explosive, expensive spectacle that leaves you wondering what, exactly, was the point of it all. For Ditchit, a startup hoping to compete with services like Facebook Marketplace and OfferUp, the chance to own — and then blow up — a piece of social media history was a unique opportunity. In the video posted to YouTube, Ditchit attempts to draw some parallels between Elon Musk's takeover of Twitter and its own startup ambitions. "Elon Musk rebranded Twitter to X to support free expression," the video says. "We're doing the same for local marketplaces." The connection seems tenuous at best, but James Deluca, who oversees Ditchit's PR efforts, says the company's mainstream competitors like OfferUp are "prioritizing profits over the user experience," pointing to high seller fees and other policies that prioritize listings from businesses rather than the "average person who wants to sell in their garage." Deluca claims the decision to actually blow up the enormous Twitter sign "emerged organically" sometime after Ditchit placed the winning bid. "The initial thought of purchasing the sign was driven by nostalgia," he told Engadget. "Everyone in the office is a tech enthusiast, and we thought it would be cool to own a piece of history." But any sentimental attachment the company's employees had apparently didn't last long. After paying to move the 12-foot sign from San Francisco to Ditchit's office in Orange County, California, it moved the sign another 250 miles to the desert outside of Las Vegas, Nevada. The company arranged for the controlled explosion to happen at an outdoor "adventure park" that allows visitors to shoot machine guns and drive monster trucks. Deluca didn't disclose how much the startup spent on the stunt, but said it was "a considerable investment" for the company that launched its app less than a year ago. As part of the effort, Ditchit also rented four Tesla Cybertrucks and hired a 15-person production team to capture the moment from all possible angles. The explosion itself was engineered by a pyrotechnics expert who typically works on film sets. "We wanted to really make a statement and make the scene as dramatic as possible," Deluca said. Somehow, the explosion isn't quite the end of Larry's story, though. Ditchit says it's selling fragments of the sign it retrieved after the explosion and will list them on its app in a sealed-bid auction beginning today. Proceeds from the sale will be donated to the Center for American Entrepreneurship, a nonprofit that advocates for startups and lists Meta, Amazon and Google as members of its corporate advisory council.
