Twitter’s logo has officially been rebranded to an “X”. This comes after the owner, Elon Musk, made the change to the iconic blue bird logo on Monday the 24th of July 2023, marking a major shift since his takeover of the company.
During the rebrand, the popular social media app remained live and the new logo appeared on Twitter as of early Monday.
Not only that, but Elon Musk teased the Twitter logo change early on Sunday by posting a short video of a flickering “X”.
He also tweeted on Sunday that changing the logo to an “X” was in an effort to “embody the imperfections in us all that make us unique.”
By Sunday afternoon, the web address x.com (the defunct domain that once belonged to Musk many years ago) was redirecting to twitter.com. He lost x.com in the year 2000 due to a merger between his online financial services company x.com and Confinity but managed to buy it back in 2017.
The shift from Twitter’s iconic blue bird imagery to an “X” is the latest extensive change since Musk bought Twitter for 44 billion US dollars last year. And is very much in line with what Musk hinted at back in April 2023. That he plans to change the name of the company, Twitter Inc, to X Corp.
Other changes that Twitter has recently announced include, the limiting of daily direct messages that unverified users can send in order to reduce spam.
Twitter support states that if users want to increase the daily amount of messages allowed, they will need to join Twitter’s subscription service that was launched last year.
The latest changes come as a result of the social media giant having to face competition from Meta’s newly launched app Threads.
The rebrand, according to Twitter CEO and former head of ad sales for NBC Universal, Linda Yaccarino comes as a move to push the app in new directions.
She states that “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.” And that “Powered by AI, X will connect us all in ways we’re just beginning to imagine.”
Musk has hinted at the idea of turning Twitter into a more multipurpose app since he bought the social media platform last year, mentioning an “everything app” and likening it to what WeChat has become in China.
Although Twitter is quite a ways off from being able to cater to everything that an app like We Chat offers, creating an app like this is the whole reason why Musk bought Twitter in the first place.
If all goes according to plan, the shift will mark the end of one of the most recognisable brands in social media. And with Musk evidently being unafraid to take risks, i.e. being prepared to change the Twitter logo despite the fact it may change later on, who knows how quickly Twitter might be transformed into the “everything app”.
