Elon Musk, who purchased Twitter for $44 billion last year, announced in a post on Sunday that the company will soon say goodbye to the Twitter brand and all bird imagery. As of Monday, the domain X.com redirects users to Twitter’s homepage, while Twitter.com also still works. The branding in the mobile app has not yet changed for many users.
The rebranding of Twitter to ‘X’ signifies Elon Musk’s plan to transform the platform into an all-in-one “everything app”. As described by Twitter’s CEO Linda Yaccarino on Sunday, X will focus on audio, video, messaging, payments, banking and utilize artificial intelligence. This change from Twitter to X mirrors Musk’s goal to expand the capabilities of the social media service beyond its current offerings.
As per court documents, Twitter Inc. first started transitioning to X in April after changing its corporate name to X Corp.
Elon Musk, Twitter’s Executive Chairman and CTO, stated on Monday that tweets will now be referred to as “x’s”. However, when asked about retweets, he responded that the idea needs rethinking.
Musk also posted a photo of the X logo being projected onto Twitter’s headquarters on Monday.
Elon Musk expressed his fondness for the letter “x” in a tweet on Sunday, which is evident from the logos of his other companies. His rocket maker SpaceX has an X logo, and Musk recently started an AI firm called xAI aiming to comprehend the universe. Musk also founded X.com prior to its merger with Confinity and rebranding as PayPal in 2001. He reacquired the X.com domain from PayPal in 2017, showing his affinity for the letter predating Twitter.
