On Monday, Twitter unveiled its new logo, transitioning from the iconic blue bird to a white X on a black backdrop, as part of its rebranding initiative under the ownership of Elon Musk, with the company set to be renamed as X.
The social media platform’s website displayed the new logo, although the URL remained as twitter.com and the blue “Tweet” button was still present, indicating that the rebranding process is still underway.
The rebranding was announced on Sunday by Musk and the new CEO, Linda Yaccarino, with plans for the company to later venture into the realms of payments, banking, and commerce.
Twitter, established in 2006, derived its name from the sound of birds chattering. The company has maintained bird-themed branding since its inception, purchasing a light blue bird stock symbol for $15 in its early days, as reported by the design website Creative Bloq.
Late on Sunday, Musk updated his profile picture to the new logo, which he referred to as “minimalist art deco,” and altered his Twitter bio to “X.com,” which now redirects to twitter.com.
Musk tweeted that under the new identity, a post would be referred to as “an X.”
Twitter’s parent company has already been renamed the X Corporation by Musk, who has stated that his acquisition of the social media behemoth was a catalyst for creating X, the “everything app” – a nod to X.com, a company Musk founded in 1999 that later evolved into the online payments giant, PayPal.
Such an app could continue to serve as a social media platform while incorporating messaging and mobile payments.
Musk has previously expressed his desire to develop a super-app, akin to China’s WeChat, which combines social media, messaging, and mobile payments. The new logo was projected onto the exterior of Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters on Sunday night.
Yaccarino, a former advertising sales executive at NBCUniversal who was appointed as Twitter’s CEO by Musk last month, stated that the social media platform was on the verge of expanding its reach.
However, Simon Kemp, CEO of digital consultancy Kepios, expressed doubts about Twitter’s transformation into a super-app.
Since Musk’s acquisition of Twitter for $44 billion in October last year, the platform’s advertising business has taken a hit due to Musk’s controversial management style and mass layoffs at the company.
In response, Musk, the billionaire owner of SpaceX, has begun to introduce payments and commerce through the platform in a bid to generate new revenue.
Twitter is estimated to have around 200 million daily active users, but it has experienced numerous technical glitches since Musk’s mass layoffs. This month, Musk revealed that Twitter had lost approximately half of its advertising revenue since he took over.
Meanwhile, Meta, the parent company of Facebook, also launched its text-based platform, Threads, this month, which is estimated to have up to 150 million users.
