Elon Musk, Twitter’s owner, and its new CEO said on Sunday that the social media network would abandon its bird emblem, be rebranded as X, and move fast into payments, banking, and commerce.
Twitter was founded in 2006 and gets its name from the sound of birds chattering. The firm has utilised avian branding since its early days, when it purchased a stock symbol of a pale blue bird for $15, according to the design website Creative Bloq.
Late Sunday night, Twitter CEO Linda Yaccarino tweeted a photo of the company’s new logo — a white X on a black background — and stated, “X is here! Let’s get started.”
Musk also changed his profile image to the company’s new logo, which he described as “minimalist art deco,” and his Twitter bio to “X.com,” which currently redirects to twitter.com late Sunday night.
Musk previously stated, “If a good enough X logo is posted tonight, we’ll make (it) go live worldwide tomorrow.”
Musk also tweeted that under the new name, a post will be referred to as “an X.”
As of 0630 GMT Monday, the updates were not apparent on the website.
Musk had already designated Twitter’s parent business as the X Corporation, and had previously stated that his acquisition of the social media behemoth would be “an accelerant to creating X, the everything app” — a reference to the X.com company he created in 1999, a later version of which went on to become payments giant PayPal.
Such an app may still serve as a social media platform while also offering texting and mobile payments.
“Powered by AI, X will connect us in ways we’re only just beginning to imagine,” Yaccarino said earlier on Sunday.
Yaccarino, an NBCUniversal advertising sales executive who Musk hired as Twitter’s CEO last month, said the social media company was on the verge of expanding its reach.
“X is the future state of unlimited interactivity centred in audio, video, messaging, payments/banking – creating a global marketplace for ideas, goods, services, and opportunities,” Yaccarino wrote on Twitter.
new revenue sources
Since Musk purchased Twitter for $44 billion last October, the platform’s advertising business has partially crumbled as marketers became dissatisfied with the company’s mass firings, which decimated content control — as well as Musk’s management style.
In response, SpaceX’s billionaire CEO has moved towards offering payments and commerce through the network in order to generate fresh money.
Twitter is estimated to have 200 million daily active users, but it has seen numerous technological difficulties since the 52-year-old Tesla entrepreneur purchased the service and fired much of its personnel.
Many users and advertisers have reacted negatively to the social media site’s additional charges for formerly free services, changes to content monitoring, and the reappearance of previously banned right-wing accounts since then.
Musk stated earlier this month that Twitter had lost about half of its advertising revenue since his takeover in October.
According to some estimations, Facebook parent Meta debuted its own text-based platform, Threads, this month, with up to 150 million members.
However, according to Sensor Tower statistics, the amount of time users spend on the competing app has decreased in the weeks since its launch.
