Elon Musk says Twitter will become X in corporate rebranding

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Elon Musk plans to replace Twitter’s iconic bird logo with an ‘X’ in a major corporate rebranding that comes as the company struggles to attract advertising and battles growing competition.

Musk announced the revamp on Sunday, saying on the social media platform that “soon we will be saying goodbye to the Twitter brand and slowly goodbye to all the birds”. He added: “If a good X logo is posted tonight, we’ll have it live around the world tomorrow.”

Musk has already made significant changes to Twitter since buying the company last year, changing its name to X Corp in a filing as part of his plan to build an “everything app” under the brand “X”.

On Sunday, Twitter’s new chief executive Linda Yacarino laid out the vision for ‘X’ at a meeting with top marketers in Napa, California, and urged attendees to work on the company’s new ambitions as changes begin to roll out in the coming weeks.

The company plans to move away from a text-centric platform to integrate more audio, video and payment features, and is looking to partner with broadcasters or payment groups as well as woo advertisers.

According to Twitter, Yacarino also told the board of the Mobile Marketing Association, a trade association for marketers, that the company plans to work with Musk’s new AI company, XAI, to harness artificial intelligence. Twitter data can be used to train AI models developed by xAI. In turn, xAI’s technology can be used to improve Twitter, the company said.

“X is the future state of limitless interactivity – centered in audio, video, messaging, payments/banking – creating a global marketplace for ideas, goods, services and opportunities,” Yacarino tweeted on Sunday.

“Powered by AI, X will connect us all in ways we’ve only just begun to imagine,” he said.

Twitter has come under pressure since Musk closed a $44 billion acquisition of the company in October. The billionaire entrepreneur has cut costs while downsizing the workforce, while radical policy changes frustrate users and advertisers, advertising revenue has fallen in half and the company is on the verge of bankruptcy.

The platform’s latest challenge came this month when rival Meta nudged millions of users toward its long-awaited Twitter competitor Threads. Twitter has threatened to sue Meta, alleging that it stole the company’s trade secrets while building its messaging app.

Musk has a history of changing his mind after making public announcements. If he goes ahead with the rebranding, it would be the latest attempt to bring about change at the company.

In May, he appointed Yacarino, former head of advertising for NBCUniversal, to head Twitter in an effort to lure back dozens of large advertisers who had left the platform because of Musk’s unorthodox leadership style and lax content moderation.

Musk has said that advertisers are returning to Twitter but have continued to harass its users. He reacted sharply this month by announcing that the social media platform was imposing a temporary limit on the number of posts users could see.

Earlier this month, Musk said the company has yet to reach positive cash flow, while in March he suggested it could do so by the second quarter. “We are still negative cash flow due to a ~50% drop in advertising revenue and a heavy debt burden,” he wrote on July 14.

Its website says that Twitter’s light blue bird logo is the company’s “most recognizable asset”, familiar to people around the world. it was Named “Larry T. Bird” By Twitter co-founder Biz Stone after former basketball player Larry Bird.