‘White X’ replaces ‘blue bird’ as Twitter logo

Elon Musk killed off the Twitter brand on Monday, changing the world-recognized blue chicken with a white X because the tycoon accelerates his efforts to remodel the floundering social media large.

Musk and the corporate’s new chief government Linda Yaccarino introduced the rebranding Sunday, scrapping certainly one of know-how’s most iconic manufacturers within the newest shock transfer for the reason that tycoon took over Twitter 9 months in the past.

Musk’s connection to the letter X goes again almost 24 years when he based X.com that later was renamed PayPal regardless of his objections. His area firm is named SpaceX and the mother or father firm of Twitter was modified to X earlier this 12 months.

He described the emblem as “minimalist artwork deco,” and up to date his Twitter bio to “X.com,” which now redirects to twitter.com.

The Tesla CEO additionally tweeted that beneath the location’s new id, a submit could be referred to as “an X.”

Musk has mentioned his takeover of the social media large was “an accelerant to creating X, the every part app” — an app impressed by China’s WeChat that capabilities as a social media platform and likewise messaging and funds.

“You principally dwell on WeChat in China as a result of it is so usable and useful to day by day life, and I believe if we are able to obtain that, and even get near that at Twitter, it might be an immense success,” he informed an organization city corridor assembly in June final 12 months.

The brand new brand was projected onto the facade of Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters on Sunday night time.

“Powered by AI, X will join us in methods we’re simply starting to think about,” Yaccarino tweeted earlier.

Yaccarino, a former promoting gross sales government at NBCUniversal who Musk employed final month to be Twitter’s CEO, mentioned the social media platform was on the cusp of broadening its scope.

“X is the longer term state of limitless interactivity – centered in audio, video, messaging, funds/banking – creating a worldwide market for concepts, items, companies, and alternatives.”

The emblem change was greeted with criticism in addition to nostalgia for a picture that had turn into an emblem for the social media age.

Martin Grasser, one of many authentic designers of the blue chicken brand, wrote on social media that the symbol was supposed to be “easy, balanced, and legible at very small sizes.”

Twitter founder Jack Dorsey, who signed off on the design in 2012, replied to Grasser with an emoji of a goat, that means “best of all time.”

Esther Crawford, a former head of product at Twitter, mentioned the change amounted to a type of “company seppuku,” the Japanese ritual suicide for samurais.

That is “normally dedicated by new administration in pursuit of cost-savings attributable to a lack of know-how concerning the core enterprise or disregard for the client expertise,” she added.

Since Musk purchased Twitter for $44 billion final October, the platform’s promoting enterprise has collapsed as entrepreneurs soured on Musk’s administration type and mass firings on the firm that gutted content material moderation.

Musk final week mentioned Twitter has misplaced roughly half of its promoting income since he took the reins.

In response, the billionaire SpaceX boss has moved towards constructing a subscriber base in a seek for new income.

Twitter is assumed to have round 200 million day by day energetic customers, nevertheless it has suffered repeated technical failures since Musk sacked a lot of its employees.

Many customers and advertisers alike have responded adversely to the social media web site’s new costs for beforehand free companies, its adjustments to content material moderation, and the return of beforehand banned right-wing accounts

Fb mother or father Meta additionally launched its text-based platform this month, referred to as Threads, which has as much as 150 million customers in keeping with some estimates.

However the period of time customers spend on the rival app has plummeted within the weeks since its launch, in keeping with knowledge from market evaluation agency Sensor Tower.