Elon Musk has announced that he is rebranding Twitter immediately – renaming the site to ‘X’ and the platform’s iconic blue bird logo to the letter.
The change, announced in a series of tweets from the Tesla and SpaceX leader, serves as the latest in a series of shakeups at the social media platform since Musk, 52, bought it late last year.
The CEO first hinted at some big changes to the site – which has been battling declining user numbers and increased competition in recent months – on Sunday morning, saying the bird logo would soon be replaced with a plain ‘X’.
He hinted that the symbol comes as part of a larger rebrand of the entire platform and could be implemented as soon as tomorrow, as he searches for the right design.
Hours later, as viewers continued to debate the news and its validity online, the sometimes sarcastic CEO made it clear that he was serious – a URL redirect published already exists, and will now bring users who type in X.com directly to the website.
On Sunday morning, Elon Musk announced that Twitter’s famous bird logo will likely be changed to an X as soon as Monday.
‘X.com now points to https://twitter.com/,’ Musk wrote around 1:45pm in a tweet that has already been viewed more than 7 million times.
Of the newly announced logo, still in limbo, he added: ‘The interim X logo will go live later today.’
Thousands of users weighed in on the mask’s answer, dropping design suggestions for the new logo.
‘And soon we’ll say goodbye to the Twitter brand and, slowly, all the birds,’ quickly followed by: ‘If enough good X logos are posted tonight, we’ll go live worldwide tomorrow.’
He followed the announcement by offering some creative direction for potential designers: ‘If X is the closest thing to a style, it must be Art Deco.’
He then posted a dark version of the current Twitter logo and wrote, ‘Like this but X.’
Finally, Musk posted a shiny video of an X bird overtaking and pinned it to the top of his profile.
The image was proposed by Sawyer Merritt, co-founder of a sustainable clothing brand, and designed by Alex Tourville, a physics engineer.
It’s unclear whether the pinned XTE mask will use the company’s logo going forward
The site’s current logo, known as Larry the Bird, has been Twitter’s symbol since its creation in 2006, with the current design in use since 2012.
According to Twitter’s website, Larry is ‘our most recognizable asset’ and ‘why we’re so protective of it.’
In April, the site’s logo was briefly replaced with an image of a Shibu Inu dog, which helped boost the market value of Dogecoin, the popular meme coin, by $4 billion.
That same month, an email was sent to Twitter’s business partners informing them that the company had been renamed X Corp following the merger, but that the shortened social media platform would keep its original name — for now.
X Corp could also serve as a future parent company for Musk’s other businesses: Neuralink, SpaceX, Tesla and The Boring Company.
When the corporate filing became public in April, Musk tweeted a simple ‘X’ to his millions of followers. It’s unclear when Musk will change Twitter’s name.
The logo announcement comes about two weeks after the launch of Musk’s new artificial intelligence startup, xAI — which is now the sole occupant of Musk’s Twitter bio.
The Musk-led startup will aim to provide an alternative to ChatGPT.
According to Musk, who has repeatedly warned about the uncontrolled development of AI, the company will create a ‘highly curious’ AI.
‘If it’s trying to understand the true nature of the universe, that’s really the best thing I can come up with from an AI safety perspective,’ he said. ‘I think it would be in favor of humanity from the point of view that humanity is much more interesting than non-humanity.’
Musk pinned a shiny version of this X to the top of his profile. It is not clear if this logo will be used as the official new image for the site
Kasturi appeared to hint at the court filing with a tweet: ‘X’
According to Twitter’s website, Larry is ‘our most recognizable asset’ and ‘why we’re so protective of it’.
Musk showed his users an example of the aesthetic he had in mind for the new logo
The logo change will be the latest of several changes to shake up the company since Musk’s takeover.
He has previously been criticized for winding up the company of most of his employees as well as cashing the status of ‘verified’ blue checks in April.
Earlier this month, Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, launched its own short-form posting app, called Threads.
Mark Zuckerberg said more than 30 million people signed up for the rival service in its first 24 hours.
Twitter has threatened to sue the company for allegedly stealing trade secrets.
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