TWITTER BOSS ELON Musk has unveiled a new name and logo for the social media site – X.

The site’s long-time logo, a sky-blue bird, is ubiquitous with social media and the internet, but is being replaced by a stylised X.

X is here! Let’s do this. pic.twitter.com/1VqEPlLchj

— Linda Yaccarino (@lindayacc) July 24, 2023

Musk and the company’s new chief executive Linda Yaccarino announced the rebranding yesterday, saying the company would move later into payments, banking, and commerce.

The SpaceX and Tesla boss has previously said he wanted to create a super-app modelled on China’s WeChat, a social media platform that also offers messaging and mobile payments.

Musk has long been fixated on the X logo – he has already named Twitter’s parent company the X Corporation, whose parent company is X Holdings Corp. He also launched an artificial intelligence startup called xAI earlier this year.

He has said his takeover of Twitter was “an accelerant to creating X, the everything app” – a reference to the X.com company he founded in 1999, a later version of which went on to become online payments giant PayPal.

According to Yaccarino, the rebranding is part of a move to create “a global marketplace for ideas, goods, services, and opportunities”.

For years, fans and critics alike have pushed Twitter to dream bigger, to innovate faster, and to fulfill our great potential. X will do that and more. We’ve already started to see X take shape over the past 8 months through our rapid feature launches, but we’re just getting…

— Linda Yaccarino (@lindayacc) July 23, 2023

Musk changed his profile picture yesterday to the company’s new logo, which he described as “minimalist art deco,” and updated his Twitter bio to “X.com,” which now redirects to twitter.com.

He also tweeted that under the site’s new identity, a post would be called “an X.”

The billionaire has a history of tongue-in-cheek branding: one of his other ventures is The Boring Company, a tunnel-construction firm. Additionally, the names of the cars sold by Tesla, when acronymised, spell out “S3XY.”

Back in 2020, Musk and singer Grimes even named their baby X Æ A-12.

‘Super-app’

Simon Kemp, CEO of digital consultancy Kepios, said he was skeptical that Twitter could evolve into a super-app.

Kemp told AFP: “Given how Musk has treated Twitter’s own employees since the acquisition, I don’t imagine many developers will rush to build third-party apps to integrate into the Twitter ecosystem unless Musk can offer outstanding incentives, and that’ll be extra tricky given the company’s existing debt.”

But he also said the platform had the potential to become “a great (global and paid) news aggregator.”

Since Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion last October, the platform’s advertising business has partially collapsed as marketers soured on Musk’s management style and mass firings at the company that gutted content moderation.

In response, the billionaire has moved toward introducing payments and commerce through the platform in a search for new revenue.

Twitter is thought to have around 200 million daily active users, but it has suffered repeated technical failures since Musk sacked much of its staff.

Many users and advertisers alike have responded adversely to the social media site’s new charges for previously free services, its changes to content moderation, and the return of previously banned right-wing accounts.

Musk said this month that Twitter had lost roughly half of its advertising revenue since he took control.

‘Sinister’

The rebranding has been derided by many of its users.

People still call our streaming service 4OD so good luck https://t.co/olKv5FFTWf

— Channel 4 (@Channel4) July 24, 2023

Comedian Jenny Eclair spoke of the “sinister” look of the rebrand and said the app no longer “means anything” after the name change.

“So what has this sinister X got to do with anything, the Twitter bird made sense because birds tweet, this just doesn’t mean anything,” she tweeted.

Britain’s Got Talent winner Paul Potts also took to the social media platform and questioned Musk’s marketing skills, suggesting the social media titan keep the Twitter name.

Elon may be rich, but I'm not sure he has a clue about marketing.Changing to "X" is a bit like me bowing to people who (foolishly IMO) suggest me takin a different name post BGT. You have to invest too much to remake what was already known. Remember Myspace? or My___ ? #TwitterX

— Paul Potts (@paulpottsmusic) July 24, 2023

Additional reporting by AFP and PA