Exit the volatile: Twitter, which means tweet in English and which has used a blue bird as its logo since its launch in 2006, launched its new logo on its website on Monday, a stylized capital X in black and white.
Elon Musk, the whimsical businessman and owner of the social network, and the company’s new chief executive, Linda Yaccarino, hired just a month ago, announced over the weekend that the platform would drop the bluebird logo, be rebranded as X and quickly launch into payments, banking and commerce.
“”X” is here! We will do it “
While the social network’s website is showing the new logo on Monday morning, its URL is still twitter.com, the blue “Tweet” button is still on the site, and some users have seen a blue version of the X logo. “‘X’ is here!” We will do it, ”wrote Linda Yaccarino on Twitter, posting a photo of the new logo around 05:50 GMT on Monday.
As of Sunday, Elon Musk had changed his profile photo on Twitter, replacing it with the new logo, which he described as “Art Deco”. He also changed the link in his bio to X.com, which now redirects to the Twitter site.
Not tweets, but Xs
On Saturday evening, Elon Musk said he was considering getting rid of the Twitter logo. “We will soon say ‘goodbye’ [en français] 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 put it online worldwide tomorrow,” he said.
Asked by a user, Elon Musk also indicated that the tweets would be called Xs after the name change.
X, a letter dear to Elon Musk
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. After buying Twitter last year for 44 billion dollars, Elon Musk changed the name of the company to X Corp last April.
The billionaire has since regularly mentioned his nebulous project to transform it into a multifaceted application, with financial services, such as WeChat in China. “Powered by AI, X will connect us in ways we are only just beginning to imagine,” Linda Yaccarino tweeted on Sunday. “X is the future state of boundless 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 provide, well…everything,” she continued.
“X will do that and more”
“For years, fans and critics alike have pushed Twitter to dream bigger, innovate faster, fulfill our potential. X will do that and more, ”assured this former executive of NBCUniversal, recruited by Elon Musk in particular to try to reassure advertisers.
This name change would come in the midst of difficulties for Twitter, which Elon Musk has laid off about half of the staff and whose advertising revenues have 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.