Twitter launches new logo, rebrands as X

On Sunday, Twitter owner Elon Musk revealed that Twitter’s distinctive blue bird logo was to be replaced. The latest in a series of controversial changes to the website, this newest change will see Twitter rebranded as “X” with X.com already redirecting to the social media platform.

X.com is a callback to one of Musk’s first ventures. Launched in 1999 X.com was an online bank that would later become PayPal. The letter X has been a recurring theme in the eccentric billionaire’s life and career from his space exploration company “SpaceX” to the electric car Tesla Model X, and even the alleged name of his child with musician Grimes, X Æ A-XII, nicknamed “X.”

“Not sure what subtle clues gave it way, but I like the letter X”, he tweeted on Sunday.

In April, Twitter’s official name was changed to to X Holdings Corp, to reflect his vision of creating “X, the everything app” which he hopes will be realised as an app that enables users to do everything from shopping to banking, gaming and much more.

Media Executive and newly appointed X Holdings Corp CEO Linda Yaccarino tweeted her support for the rebrand and teased the future of the platform. “It’s an exceptionally rare thing – in life or in business – that you get a second chance to make another big impression. Twitter made one massive impression and changed the way we communicate. Now, X will go further, transforming the global town square.

“X is the future state of unlimited interactivity – centered in audio, video, messaging, payments/banking – creating a global marketplace for ideas, goods, services, and opportunities. Powered by AI, X will connect us all in ways we’re just beginning to imagine.

For years, fans and critics alike have pushed Twitter to dream bigger, to innovate faster, and to fulfill our great potential. X will do that and more. We’ve already started to see X take shape over the past 8 months through our rapid feature launches, but we’re just getting started.

There’s absolutely no limit to this transformation. X will be the platform that can deliver, well….everything. @elonmusk  and I are looking forward to working with our teams and every single one of our partners to bring X to the world.”

Musk teased the change on his personal account, asking his followers to weigh in on whether he should change the default colours of the app to black, following up with, “and soon we shall bid adieu to the twitter brand and, gradually, all the birds.” The new logo design was then tasked to his followers as he outlined his request to the Twittersphere stating “If a good enough X logo is posted tonight, we’ll make go live worldwide tomorrow”, with the guidance that “if X is closest in style to anything, it should, of course, be Art Deco”.

The interim logo – an art deco inspired X – was revealed hours later, projected on Twitter (or X) HQ and shared digitally by the team across the platform. The designer was not given credit but research reveals physics engineer Alex, @ajtourville on the platform may have designed the logo by tweaking a font he found online for a different project, but offered it to Musk via a tweet and it was tweaked further to make the final, interim design.
Twitter user Fontendo, an account for identifying fonts created by Created by @KaihatsuYT, tweeted, “It has come to my attention that the person who submitted this logo to Elon Musk may have not acquired the proper license to use Special Alphabets 4 in a logo for a website with a large userbase.”

While this unfolds, the hype behind Meta owned Threads is slowing. After surpassing 100 million user sign-ups in its first week, daily active users have dropped down to 23.6 million users as of July 17 according to a report published by Similarweb. Average usage time also fell from 21 minutes to 6 minutes. But Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg is not concerned. “I’m very optimistic about how the Threads community is coming together,” he wrote on Threads last week. “Early growth was off the charts, but more importantly 10s of millions of people now come back daily … The focus for the rest of the year is improving the basics and retention.”

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