Social media network Twitter have started plans to ditch its bird logo and be rebranded with the name X and move quickly into payments, banking and commerce, the owner of the network Elon Musk and its new CEO said Sunday.
According to the design website Creative Bloq, Twitter which was founded in 2006, took its name from the sound of birds chattering, and it has used avian branding since its early days, when the company bought a stock symbol of a light blue bird for $15, AFP reports.
Twitter chief executive Linda Yaccarino, whileTweeting a picture of the company’s new logo – a white X on a black background – late Sunday night, said “X is here! Let’s do this.”
In reaction to this development, Musk late Sunday night, changed his profile picture to the company’s new logo, which he described as “minimalist art deco,” and changed his Twitter bio to “X.com,” which now redirects to twitter.com.
Musk also tweeted earlier that “If a good enough X logo is posted tonight, we’ll make (it) go live worldwide tomorrow.”
He also affirmed that under the site’s new identity, a post would be called “an X.”
Although, as of 0630 GMT Monday, the changes were not visible on the website.
Musk who made further comments had already named Twitter’s parent company the X Corporation, and previously said his takeover of the social media giant 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 payments giant PayPal.
Such an app could still function as a social media platform, and also include messaging and mobile payments.
Yaccarino earlier on Sunday tweeted, “Powered by AI, X will connect us in ways we’re just beginning to imagine.”
Yaccarino, an advertising sales executive at NBCUniversal who Musk poached last month to become Twitter’s CEO, said the social media platform was on the cusp of broadening its scope.
“X is the future state of unlimited interactivity – centered in audio, video, messaging, payments/banking – creating a global marketplace for ideas, goods, services, and opportunities,” Yaccarino tweeted.
– New revenue streams –
On revenue since Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion last October, the platform’s advertising business has partially collapsed as marketers soured on mass firings at the company that gutted content moderation — as well as on Musk’s management style.
In response, the billionaire SpaceX boss has moved toward introducing payments and commerce through the platform in a search for new revenue.
Another development since the 52-year-old Tesla founder bought the app and sacked much of its staff, is that Twitter has suffered repeated technical failures, despite the fact that the platform is thought to have around 200 million daily active users.
The effect so far has made many users and advertisers alike to 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 also claimed that this month, Twitter had lost roughly half of its advertising revenue since he took control in October.
Interestingly, Facebook parent Meta, went ahead to launched its own text-based platform, called Threads this month.
Estimates from sources, since its emergence revealed that the platform has up to 150 million users.
According to data from market analysis firm Sensor Tower, the amount of time users spend on the rival app has plummeted in the weeks since its launch.
