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| Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images |
Goodbye Twitter, hello X?
Elon Musk, the multibillionaire who controls Twitter, said the social network he took over in October 2022 will be renamed “X” — relegating the cute little blue birdie to the scrap heap of internet history.
“Soon we shall bid adieu to the Twitter brand and, gradually, all the birds,” Musk wrote in a late-night Saturday post. He also said the platform’s website will be run off the x.com domain name, and posted a poll asking whether it should “Change default platform color to black” (with about 75% votes in favor as of Sunday morning).
“If a good enough X logo is posted tonight, we’ll make [it] go live worldwide tomorrow,” Musk tweeted (or should tat be “x’d”?). Musk about an hour later posted what appears to be a logo for X:
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 23, 2023
In April 2023, the company disclosed that Musk had changed the company’s name from Twitter Inc. to X Corp., which is incorporated in Nevada with its main place of business San Francisco.
Twitter, launched in 2006, has used a bird as it mascot since 2008 and the current design of the Twitter Bird logo was introduced in 2012.
Musk is the most-followed user on Twitter, with 149 million followers on the platform. Barack Obama is second, with 132 million. “Not sure what subtle clues gave it [away], but I like the letter X,” Musk posted early Sunday. One of Musk’s children with the musician and artist Grimes is named X Æ A-XII, who goes by the nickname “X.”
Not sure what subtle clues gave it way, but I like the letter X pic.twitter.com/nwB2tEfLr8
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 23, 2023
After Musk assumed control of Twitter in a $44 billion deal, he fired Twitter’s executive leadership and dismantled its board. Twitter then conducted four rounds of broad employee layoffs, slashing its headcount by about 80%, from an estimated 7,800 to about 1,500.
Musk hired ex-NBCUniversal ad exec Linda Yaccarino as Twitter’s CEO, hoping to reverse the company’s dramatic drop in ad revenue. A week ago, Musk posted that Twitter’s cash flow remains negative because of an approximately 50% decline in advertising revenue and a heavy debt load.
Musk has been trying to boost subscription revenue through Twitter Blue ($8/month), whose primary benefits include a “verified” blue-check mark (previously available only to celebs and other notable accounts). The company recently began sharing ad revenue with certain creators; to be eligible to receive payments, users must be Twitter Blue subscribers.