Twitter will become X and change its logo

Elon Musk, the whimsical businessman and owner of Twitter, and the social network’s new chief executive, Linda Yaccarino, hired just a month ago, have announced that the platform will drop the bluebird logo, be rebranded as X and quickly launch into payments, banking and commerce.

Twitter, which means tweet in English, has used a blue bird as its logo since its launch in 2006.

“+X+ is here! We’re going to do it,” wrote Ms. Yaccarino on Twitter, posting a photo of the new logo, a white X on a black background.

Mr Musk also changed his Twitter profile picture to the new logo on Sunday, describing it as “art deco”. He also changed the link in his bio to X.com, which now redirects to the Twitter site.

On Saturday evening, Mr. Musk had said he was considering getting rid of the Twitter logo. “We will soon say + goodbye + (in French, editor’s note) to the Twitter brand and, gradually, to all the birds,” he tweeted, before suggesting that the new logo could be an X.

“If a good enough X logo is posted tonight, we’ll post it worldwide tomorrow,” he said.

Asked by a netizen, Mr. Musk had also indicated that the tweets would be called Xs after the name change.

The changes were not visible on the site as of 0700 GMT on Monday.

X is a mathematical symbol that the boss of Tesla, SpaceX, Twitter and Neuralink is particularly fond of. X.com was the name and website of the online bank founded by the businessman that later became the PayPal online payment service.

It is also found in the first name of one of his children, a boy baptized X Æ A- 12.

-“No limit” –

After buying Twitter last year for $44 billion, Mr. Musk changed the company’s name to X Corp in April. He has regularly mentioned since his nebulous project to transform it into a multi-faceted application, with financial services, like WeChat in China.

“Powered by AI, X will connect us in ways we are only just beginning to imagine,” Yaccarino tweeted Sunday.

“X is the future state of limitless interactivity – centered around audio, video, messaging, payments/banking – creating a global marketplace for ideas, goods, services and opportunities,” she added.

“There are absolutely no limits to this transformation. X will be the platform that can deliver, well…everything,” she continued.

“For years, fans and critics have pushed Twitter to dream harder, innovate faster, fulfill our potential. X will do that and more,” said the former NBCUniversal executive, recruited by Mr. Musk in particular to try to reassure advertisers.

The name change would come at a time of trouble for Twitter, which Mr. Musk has laid off about half of the staff and whose advertising revenue has fallen by 50%, according to the billionaire.

The social network faces a myriad of competing apps, including Meta-launched newcomer Threads, which is estimated to have 150 million users.

Twitter brings together between 200 and 350 million active users depending on estimates.