Twitter X logo: Elon Musk begins the process of rebranding

New York
CNN
–

In a drastic rebranding, Twitter owner Elon Musk has begun the process of replacing Twitter’s iconic bird logo with an X.

Musk announced his surprise plans early Sunday. By Monday morning US time, he tweeted That X.com now refers to Twitter.com.

“The Interim X logo is going live later today,” he wrote, shortly before sharing a photo of Twitter’s headquarters lit up by a giant new X.

The social media giant official account It now features the same logo, even as the familiar blue bird is still seen on the site.

Previously, he said he was bidding Goodbye Twitter branding And gradually, all the birds.

Twitter

(TWTR)founded in 2006, has used the globally recognized and vibrant blue bird logo for more than a decade.

The rebranding could be seen as an overhaul of the company’s “Hail Mary” brand: Musk had repeatedly warned in recent months that Twitter, facing massive losses in advertising revenue, was on the brink of bankruptcy.

Adding to the pressure was, earlier this month, competition from social media platform Topics, which kicked off from Facebook

(FB) the parent is dead. get over it 100 million user subscriptions in the first week.

Twitter had 238 million active users before Musk took it private in October 2022.

one of The richest men in the worldMusk was once famous for his innovative efforts through SpaceX and Tesla

(TSLA) To launch missiles and build electric cars.

Now, many of the headlines he’s making are for his outlandish statements on his personal Twitter account — he often shares conspiracy theories and gets into public controversies on the social media platform.

Musk patched up the site after acquiring it for $44 billion in late October, then mass layoffs followed, disputes over millions of dollars allegedly ultimately owed and Musk memorandum for employees Staying at the company means “working long hours at a high intensity.” He wrote, “Only exceptional performance will constitute a passing grade.”

The unrest has prompted organizations, including the Anti-Defamation League, Free Press and GLAAD, to take action Click on brands to rethink advertising on Twitter.

The groups cited mass layoffs as a key factor in their thinking, citing concerns that Musk’s cuts would render Twitter’s election integrity policies virtually unenforceable, even if it remained technically active.

Musk also began overseeing controversial policy changes that led to frequent outages on Twitter and upended his reputation in the process.

In June, Musk named Linda Iaccarino, a former marketing executive at NBCUniversal, as CEO of the company.

She commented on the name change on Twitter on Sunday afternoon: “It’s so rare – in life or in business – that you get a second chance to make another big impression. Twitter made a huge impression and changed the way we communicate. Now, X will go even further, transforming the global city square.”

As the new venture begins, it faces challenges. Musk recently revealed that the platform continues to have negative cash flow due to a 50% drop in ad revenue and a heavy debt burden.

Criticizing the exit or hiatus of Twitter advertisers like General Mills

(GIS)Missy

(M) And some auto companies that compete with Tesla. Musk has called himself an “author of free speech” and said he wants to buy Twitter to enhance users’ ability to speak freely on the platform.

Musk explained his approach to free speech by saying, “May someone you don’t like say something you don’t like? And if that’s the case, then we have free speech.”

He added that Twitter would “be very reluctant to take things down” and that the platform would aim to allow all legal speech. Many users are concerned that this could mean an increase in hate speech.

Meanwhile, the initial frenzy around rival threads seems to be back on the ground, especially since it’s plagued with spam and lacks many of the user-friendly features Twitter, or now X, offers.

Adam Mosseri, who is overseeing the launch of Meta Threads, hinted at plans to add features such as a desktop version of the app, a user-followed-only account feed, and an edit button.

It has not been proven to attract ad support yet.