Exit the little blue bird? Elon Musk suggested on Saturday evening that he was considering a name and logo change for his social network. “We will soon say ‘farewell’ (in French) to the Twitter brand and, gradually, to all the birds,” he tweeted first, before suggesting that the new logo could be an “X”.
The billionaire and owner of Twitter has thus pinned to his profile a video posted by a user of the platform showing the current logo of Twitter, a blue bird, replaced by a flashing X. “If a good enough X logo is posted tonight, we’ll post it worldwide tomorrow,” he said. After buying Twitter last year for 44 billion dollars, Elon Musk changed the company’s name to “X Corp” in April 2023, and regularly talks about his nebulous project to transform it into a multi-faceted application, with financial services, like WeChat in China.
Twitter in troubled times
In response to a question from a user who asked if Twitter would be accessible from the address x.com, Elon Musk replied: “Of course”. X. com was the name and website of the online bank founded by the businessman, which later became the PayPal online payment service. The name change would come at a time of trouble for Twitter, which Elon Musk has laid off about half of the staff and whose advertising revenue has fallen by half, according to the billionaire. The social network faces a myriad of competing apps, including newcomer Threads, launched by rival Meta.
Asked by another Internet user, Elon Musk also indicated that the tweets would be called Xs after the name change.