Elon Musk Rebrands Twitter As X

The blue bird logo signifying the social media platform Twitter was replaced on Sunday with a stylized white X on a black background as part of the company’s rebrand.

This is the latest change led by owner Elon Musk, who stepped down as CEO last month but still remains a prominent figure at the company, serving as executive chairman and chief technology officer.

CEO Linda Yaccarino, who previously worked as an advertising executive at NBCUniversal, said that X aims to expand into areas like online banking and video messaging using the power of artificial intelligence.

The goal to become an “everything app” was announced last year when Musk tweeted, “Buying Twitter is an accelerant to creating X, the everything app.”

Some have pointed to WeChat as a comparison to Musk’s vision for X. WeChat is a popular app in China that is not only used for messaging and media-sharing but also serves as a way to pay people and purchase products.

On July 15, Musk tweeted that Twitter had lost 50% of its advertising revenue and suffered from negative cash flow where more money is being spent than earned through revenue.

Before Musk acquired the company, Twitter made most of its money through advertising. But in the following months, large companies took down their ads from the social media platform amid what some claim to be a sharp increase in hateful and explicit content.

Musk has been interested in making X for at least two decades. In 1999, he started an online payments and banking company called X.com that later merged with PayPal. Musk bought “X.com” back from PayPal in 2017, and now, the domain redirects to Twitter.