In what sounds like a late April Fools joke, Twitter has been rebranded as “X.” The rebranding, done under the direction of owner Elon Musk, includes an “interim” logo that includes a white “X” logo on a black background. The new logo replaces the familiar blue bird logo. The change is part of a plan to transform the shot message social network into a “covers everything” app, similar to China’s WeChat.
Sunday we saw Musk change his profile picture to the new logo, while also adding “X.com” link to his bio, which takes readers to the Twitter homepage.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 23, 2023
An early Monday morning tweet from Twitter CEO Linda Yaccarino said “X is here! Let’s do this.”
X is here! Let’s do this. pic.twitter.com/1VqEPlLchj
— Linda Yaccarino (@lindayaX) July 24, 2023
Musk later shared an image of the new X branding projected onto the side of Twitter’s headquarters in San Francisco.
Our headquarters tonight pic.twitter.com/GO6yY8R7fO
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 24, 2023
Twitter’s official legal entity name was registered as X Corp when Musk acquired the company in October 2022. Musk has since referred to it as “X” or “an accelerant to creating X.” However, the customer-facing blue bird branding had continued to be used.
Musk says he believes the rebranding “should have been done a long time ago.” Musk has long had a thing for the letter X, so the rebranding doesn’t come as much of a surprise. For example in the SpaceX and X.Ai company names. X.com was also the name of the online bank Musk co-founded before it merged with Confinity to eventually become PayPal.
Platformer‘s Zoe Schiffer reports that Musk sent an email last night to Twitter employees telling them the company would now be known publicly as X, and that it was the last time he would send email from a Twitter address.
“Tweets” are to be called “x’s”. Currently, the service still appears as Twitter in the official app, but that will likely change soon.
