Elon Musk: Twitter unveils X logo to replace blue bird

Twitter’s boss has unveiled the social media site’s new logo, featuring a white X on a black background, which will replace its bluebird.

In a tweet on Monday morning, Linda Yaccarino said “X is here! Let’s do this.”

“Tweets” will also be replaced, according to Twitter’s owner Elon Musk, and posts will be called “x’s”.

The billionaire changed his profile picture to the new logo and added “X.com” to his Twitter bio.

Mr Musk wants to create a “super app” called “X” – his vision for a new kind of social media platform that he has been talking about creating for months.

On Sunday, the billionaire said he was looking to change Twitter’s logo, tweeting: “And soon we shall bid adieu to the Twitter brand and, gradually, all the birds.”

He then shared a picture of the new X branding projected onto the side of Twitter headquarters in San Francisco.

Mr Musk, who has changed the name of the business to X Corp, said the replacement “should have been done a long time ago”.

Mr Musk posted an image of a flickering “X” on Twitter, and later in a Twitter Spaces audio chat, replied “Yes” when asked if the Twitter logo will change.

Ms Yaccarino wrote on the platform that the rebrand was an exciting new opportunity.

“Twitter made one massive impression and changed the way we communicate,” she said.

“Now, X will go further, transforming the global town square.”

The bird is called Larry which Twitter’s co-founder Biz Stone said, in 2011, is a tribute to basketball star and Boston Celtics legend Larry Bird.

The everything app

For some people in Asia, super-apps including India’s PayTM and Indonesia’s GoJek have been a vital part of everyday lives for the past few years.

The apps let users pay for services through a finance system.

WeChat is a messaging and social media platform that has evolved into one of the region’s biggest apps in terms of its range of services and a number of users.

Last year, it was estimated to have 1.29 billion users in China alone.

Twitter’s website says its logo, depicting a blue bird, is “our most recognisable asset”. “That’s why we’re so protective of it,” it added.

The firm temporarily replaced the logo in April with Dogecoin’s Shiba Inu dog, helping drive a surge in the meme coin’s market value.

Mr Musk was later accused of insider trading by a group of Dogecoin investors, who claimed he had profited from driving up Dogecoin’s value.

The company was criticised by users and marketers when Mr Musk announced earlier this month that there would be a limit on how many tweets per day various account holders can read.

The daily limits helped in the growth of Meta-owned rival service Threads, which had more than 100 million sign-ups in five days of launching.

Twitter’s most recent complication was a lawsuit filed on Tuesday that claimed the firm owes at least $500m (£388.7m) in severance pay to former employees.

Since Mr Musk bought it, the company has laid off more than half its workforce.

X obsession

Mr Musk has long had a fascination with the letter X – although no one really knows why.

One of his first business ventures in 1999 was known as X.com, which was an online banking platform.

Just three years later, Mr Musk made $165m when X.com – by then merged with PayPal – was bought by eBay.

He also owns the X.com domain name, which now redirects to Twitter.

Mr Musk is also the chief executive of SpaceX, the commercial American aerospace company founded in 2002.

There is also the name of his first child with musician Grimes – X Æ A-12 Musk.

Mr Musk also recently launched his long-awaited artificial intelligence start-up – xAI – in a bid to build an alternative to ChatGPT.

Source: BBC