WASHINGTON: Elon Musk has unveiled a new black and white “X” logo to replace Twitter’s famous blue bird as he follows through with a major rebranding of the social media platform he bought for $44 billion last year.
Musk replaced his own Twitter icon with a white X on a black background and posted a picture of the design projected on Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters.
The X started appearing on the top of the desktop version of Twitter on Monday, but the bird was still dominant across the phone app.
Musk had asked fans for logo ideas and chose one, which he described as minimalist Art Deco, saying it “certainly will be refined.”
“And soon we shall bid adieu to the Twitter brand and, gradually, all the birds,” Musk tweeted Sunday.
The X.com web domain now redirects users to Twitter.com, Musk said.
In response to questions about what tweets would be called when the rebranding is done, Musk said they would be called Xs.
Musk, CEO of Tesla, has long been fascinated with the letter. The billionaire is also CEO of rocket company Space Exploration Technologies Corp., commonly known as SpaceX. And in 1999, he founded a startup called X.com, an online financial services company now known as PayPal,
He calls his son with the singer Grimes, whose actual name is a collection of letters and symbols, “X.”
Musk’s Twitter purchase and rebranding are part of his strategy to create what he’s dubbed an ” everything app ” similar to China’s WeChat, which combines video chats, messaging, streaming and payments.
Linda Yaccarino, the longtime NBC Universal executive Musk tapped to be Twitter CEO in May, posted the new logo and weighed in on the change, writing on Twitter that X would be “the future state of unlimited interactivity — centered in audio, video, messaging, payments/banking — creating a global marketplace for ideas, goods, services, and opportunities.”
Experts, however, predicted the new name will confuse much of Twitter’s audience, which has already been souring on the social media platform following a raft of Musk’s other changes. The site also faces new competition from Threads, the new app by Facebook and Instagram parent Meta that directly targets Twitter users.
(AP/VOA)