Global Courant
Twitter owner Elon Musk announced on Sunday that the app’s world-famous bird logo would be switched to an “X” later today.
Musk had said the change would take place on Monday, but he tweeted hours later that the “Interim X logo will go live later today.”
Early Sunday, Musk posted a short video of a flickering “X”. Later in a Twitter Spaces audio chat, he replied “Yes” when asked if the logo will change.
“Yes, we cut the Twitter logo off the building with torches,” he told an unidentified speaker.
Sunday afternoon the web address x.com, a domain returned to Musk in 2017 after it was relinquished under the merger that became PayPal, forwarded to Twitter.
The shift from bird imagery to that of a capital letter will be the latest major change since he bought Twitter for $44 billion last year.
Musk tweeted that the idea of changing the logo to “X” is “To embody the imperfections in all of us that make us unique.”
“And soon we will say goodbye to the Twitter brand and gradually all birds,” Musk wrote.
On Sunday, Twitter CEO Linda Yaccarino said the brand change will introduce a major hub for the microblogging platform, which she says will become a marketplace for “goods, services and opportunities” powered by artificial intelligence.
“It is exceptionally rare – in life or business – that you get a second chance to make another big impression,” the chief tweeted. “Twitter made a huge impact and changed the way we communicate. Now X goes further and transforms the global city square.”
She continued, “X will connect us all in ways we’re just beginning to imagine.”
Musk put new curfew on its digital town square a move this month that drew sharp criticism that it could drive away more advertisers and undermine its cultural clout as a trendsetter.
The higher tweet viewing threshold is part of an $8 per month subscription service Musk rolled out this year to boost revenue. Sales have plummeted since he took over the company, laying off about three-quarters of the workforce to cut costs and avoid bankruptcy.
In May, Musk hired Yaccarino, then the president of advertising and partnerships at NBC Universal, to lead the platform.
Luring advertisers is essential to Musk and Twitter after many fled in the first months after his acquisition, fearing damage to their brands in the surrounding chaos. Advertisers have cut back on spending, in part because of changes Musk made that allowed more hateful content to flourish and to offend a larger share of the platform’s audience.
Musk said that at the end of April advertisers had returnedbut he gave no details.
Twitter is also facing competition from Meta’s new app, Wires, launched this month. It is seen as an alternative to those who have been on Twitter.
Threads is being billed as a text-based version of Meta’s photo-sharing app, Instagram, which the company says offers “a new, separate space for real-time updates and public conversations.”
In the first five days after launch 100 million people signed up for Threads, Instagram head Adam Mosseri said on Threads.
Jason Abbruzzese and Dennis Romero contributed.
