Elon Musk with the original Twitter logo and the changed X logo in the background. Musk has said his vision is to create an ‘everything app’ that performs both social media and payment functions.
Elon Musk made an announcement on Sunday that Twitter’s well-known bird logo would be replaced with an X, marking another controversial change to the social media platform under his leadership.
In a tweet on Sunday afternoon, the Tesla CEO stated, “X.com now points to twitter.com. Interim X logo goes live later today.” Musk, who acquired Twitter for a staggering $44 billion last October, expressed his desire to switch to an “X” logo as early as Monday, provided a suitable design was presented.
In April, Musk renamed the company to X Holdings Corp, drawing inspiration from his previous venture, X.com, with a vision to create an all-encompassing app called “X” that combines social media and payment functions, similar to China’s WeChat.
While Musk has a habit of announcing significant and controversial changes to the platform on his public feed, the reception of these changes has been mixed. Allen Adamson, co-founder of marketing consultancy Metaforce, believes the rebranding will confuse a large portion of Twitter users who have already expressed dissatisfaction with previous major changes made by Musk, and he views it as the end of an iconic brand and business.
Linda Yaccarino, Twitter’s chief executive, confirmed the launch of the X brand, stating that it would be a transformative global platform centered on audio, video, messaging, payments/banking, and would serve as a marketplace for ideas, goods, services, and opportunities.
Despite laying off half of the company’s workforce after the acquisition, Musk disclosed that Twitter remains cashflow-negative with significant debt, mainly due to a decline in advertising revenue. Several advertisers withdrew from the platform after Musk took over, fearing potential damage to their brands amidst the early upheaval. Some of Musk’s changes, such as the handling of “blue ticks” verification and introducing paid-for accounts, have been met with criticism and subsequently revised or reversed.
Musk’s plan to change the “for you” timeline to feature only paid-for accounts was scrapped shortly after its announcement. On the other hand, the recent limitation on the amount of content users can view daily to combat bot accounts has inadvertently boosted the growth of Meta’s competitor service, Threads.
Threads, described as a text-based version of Meta’s Instagram with real-time updates and public conversations, gained an impressive 100 million sign-ups within its first five days of launch.
Musk humorously revealed the impending removal of Twitter’s logo on his own account, tweeting, “And soon we shall bid adieu to the Twitter brand and, gradually, all the birds.”
