Elon Musk announced on Sunday that Twitter\u2019s new logo, an X, would go live, replacing the distinctive bird logo in what would be the latest in a series of controversial shake-ups to the social media platform under his stewardship.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cX.com now points to twitter.com,\u201d the Tesla chief executive\u00a0tweeted Sunday afternoon. \u201cInterim X logo goes live later today.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Musk, who\u00a0bought the site for $44bn (\u00a334bn) last October,\u00a0tweeted in the early hours of Sunday that he intended to replace the blue avian silhouette with an \u201cX\u201d logo by as early as Monday if a suitable design was offered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Musk changed the company\u2019s official name in April to X Holdings Corp, after his early venture X.com, to reflect his vision of creating \u201cX, the everything app\u201d performing social media and payment functions, similar to China\u2019s WeChat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If the rebranding goes ahead, it will be the latest example of Musk\u2019s tendency to announce big and contentious changes to the site apparently on the hoof on his public feed, with mixed results.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The change will be very confusing to a huge chunk of\u00a0Twitter\u00a0users, which have already been souring on the social platform given a slew of other major changes Musk has made, said Allen Adamson, co-founder of marketing consultancy Metaforce.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThey won\u2019t get it,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s a fitting end to a phenomenal unwinding of an iconic brand and business.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Despite laying off half the company\u2019s staff after acquisition, Musk revealed in recent days that it remains cashflow-negative with a heavy debt burden, after\u00a0losing half of its advertising revenue, scuppering his plans to become cashflow-positive by June.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Many advertisers left the platform shortly after Musk took over the company, fearing damage to their brands in the early chaos. They have cut back on ad spending partly because of concerns about changes the new owner has made that have allowed for more hateful content to flourish.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Musk\u2019s moves \u2013 such as\u00a0scrapping the legacy \u201cblue ticks\u201d of users\u00a0whose accounts were verified as genuine, while allowing others to pay for the privilege \u2013 have often received criticism and been revised or reversed after a backlash.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A plan\u00a0to change the \u201cfor you\u201d timeline to show only paid-for accounts\u00a0was scrapped\u00a0within days of its announcement. Meanwhile, its recent switch to\u00a0limit the amount of content users can view\u00a0each day to tackle bot accounts has been seen as bolstering the growth of Meta\u2019s rival service, Threads, which launched earlier this month.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Threads, which is being billed as a text-based version of Meta\u2019s Instagram that the company said offers \u201ca new, separate space for real-time updates and public conversations\u201d,\u00a0picked up 100 million sign-ups in its first five days.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The planned removal of Twitter\u2019s logo was first revealed, as might be expected, on Musk\u2019s account, when he\u00a0tweeted: \u201cAnd soon we shall bid adieu to the Twitter brand and, gradually, all the birds.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A subsequent post\u00a0added: \u201cIf a good enough X logo is posted tonight, we\u2019ll make [it] go live worldwide tomorrow.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Musk further stated that his reasoning for changing the symbol was \u201cto embody the imperfections in us all that make us unique\u201d. He also\u00a0posted a photo\u00a0of himself making an \u201cX\u201d symbol with crossed arms in front of a poster for the Tesla Model X car, with the caption: \u201cNot sure what subtle clues gave it away, but I like the letter X.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The flurry of tweets followed a poll he had issued asking whether he should change the site\u2019s default pale blue colour scheme to black. At the time of publication, three-quarters of respondents had backed a switch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Twitter did not immediately respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Twitter\u2019s website says its logo, depicting the blue\u00a0\u201cLarry T Bird\u201d\u00a0as Twitter co-founder Biz Stone named him, is \u201cour most recognisable asset\u201d, adding: \u201cThat\u2019s why we\u2019re so protective of it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The site\u2019s association with a bird has previously been\u00a0explained by co-founder Jack Dorsey in interviews\u00a0by his discovery that the dictionary definition of \u201ctwitter\u201d was a \u201cshort inconsequential burst of information; chirps from birds\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
However, in April it was\u00a0briefly replaced by a shiba inu dog, the symbol of the dogecoin cryptocurrency, helping drive a surge in the meme coin\u2019s market value.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Whether the logo will permanently change to an X remains to be seen, given Musk\u2019s patchy history at fulfilling his Twitter promises.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He pledged to stand by the results of\u00a0a Twitter poll last December\u00a0asking whether he should continue as the site\u2019s chief executive. Several days after users told him to stand down, he eventually suggested he would do so\u00a0only once he had found someone \u201cfoolish enough to take the job\u201d. Former NBCUniversal executive Linda Yaccarino was\u00a0confirmed in the role in May.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If Musk does end up replacing the Twitter bird with an X, it would not be the first time the platform has undergone some kind of rebranding.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dorsey said in 2018 that the\u00a0company at one point was briefly known as \u201ctwttr\u201d\u00a0before the company \u201cadded the vowels back in\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Elon Musk announced on Sunday that Twitter\u2019s new logo, an X, would go live, replacing the distinctive bird logo in what would be the latest in a series of controversial shake-ups to the social media platform under his stewardship. \u201cX.com now points to twitter.com,\u201d the Tesla chief executive\u00a0tweeted Sunday afternoon. \u201cInterim X logo goes live […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":21566,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_post_source_name":"","_post_source_url":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[80,50],"tags":[5522,11110,10354,6573,13175,6369,5806,5262,6725,6190,4119,3545,6543,8394,10742,8396,7806,7259,11973,8386,13301,8383,5349,5470,5351,5350,6348,8385,11622,3954,594,6974,10353],"class_list":["post-36442","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","category-technology","tag-arms","tag-asset","tag-bird","tag-black","tag-car","tag-chaos","tag-cryptocurrency","tag-cut","tag-debt","tag-dog","tag-elon-musk","tag-founder","tag-growth","tag-instagram","tag-market","tag-meta","tag-model","tag-musk","tag-one","tag-platform","tag-results","tag-revenue","tag-social-media","tag-space","tag-tesla","tag-twitter","tag-us","tag-verified","tag-vision","tag-will","tag-who","tag-worldwide","tag-x"],"blocksy_meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36442","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36442"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36442\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36443,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36442\/revisions\/36443"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21566"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36442"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36442"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36442"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}