Business & Economy

Twitter ditches blue bird, rebrands to ‘X’

By Sarah Yañez-Richards

New York, Jul 24 (EFE).- Elon Musk has made one of his biggest moves at Twitter since acquiring the company last year, dropping the brand’s iconic blue bird logo and replacing it with a black-and-white “X.”

That decision marks his first step toward making X.com (a domain he reacquired from PayPal six years ago) a platform that extends beyond social media and doing away with the Twitter name itself.

“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,” Twitter CEO Linda Yaccarino said in a message on that microblogging site.

“Powered by AI, X will connect us all in ways we’re just beginning to imagine.”

“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,” Yaccarino added.

CHANGES AT TWITTER DURING MUSK’S 8-MONTH TENURE

Musk’s move to scrap a logo that attained global recognition – something few brands achieve – is the most visible change he has carried out since paying $44 billion for the social media service last November.

But it’s not the only major one.

During those eight months, the multi-billionaire founder of Tesla and SpaceX has fired roughly three-fourths of Twitter’s staff and delisted the company from the New York Stock Exchange.

He also has ditched the previous administration’s system for verifying trusted accounts and begun charging $8 a month for users who want to retain their identity-verifying blue checks or obtain one on the platform.

Other changes Musk has implemented also have affected the content users may see, particularly his decision to welcome back accounts that had been banned for spreading hate or disinformation.

The sheer amount of alterations to the user experience frightened off advertisers and cost the company a big chunk of its main revenue source.

The changes also threaten to cause a major dip in traffic on the micro-blogging site, with the prestigious Pew Research Center reporting in May that a quarter of Twitter users said they believed they would no longer be on the platform in one year’s time.

Amid Twitter’s troubles, Meta (the parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp) launched a potentially powerful rival earlier this month known as Threads.

ARE TWEETS DEAD?

With Twitter’s rebranding, one of the most read questions on the platform on Monday was: “What are tweets called now?” Musk’s reply: “x’s.”

Musk has long had an affinity for the letter X.

In April, Twitter ceased to be an independent company after being merged into a new entity called X Corp.

X.com was the original name of the PayPal payment platform he co-founded.

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