Musk says Twitter will change the logo to an “X” instead of a bird. Changes may occur as early as Monday. — Today News
Posted by ANN D’INNOCENTIO (AP Retail Specialist)
NEW YORK (FloridaToday.news) — Elon Musk said Sunday he plans to change the Twitter logo to an “X” for the famous blue bird, in what would be the latest big change since he bought the social media platform for $44 billion last year.
In a series of posts on his Twitter account starting at 12:00 pm ET, the Twitter owner said he wants to make changes globally as early as Monday.
“And soon we will say goodbye to the Twitter brand and, gradually, to all the birds,” Musk wrote in his account.
This change is not surprising given Musk’s long history with the name “X,” says Allen Adamson, co-founder of marketing consultancy Metaforce. Last October, the billionaire CEO of Tesla tweeted that “buying Twitter is accelerating the creation of X, the universal app.”
Musk’s rocket company, Space Exploration Technologies Corp., is commonly known as SpaceX. And in 1999, Musk founded a startup called X.com, an online financial services company now known as PayPal.
“I don’t know what subtle clues led to this, but I like the letter X,” Musk wrote on Sunday.
Hours later on Sunday, Linda Iaccarino, longtime NBC Universal executive Musk, who was appointed CEO of Twitter in May, spoke out on the matter.
“It’s an exceptionally rare thing – in life or in business – when you get a second chance to make another big impression,” she wrote on her Twitter account. “Twitter has made a huge impact and has changed the way we communicate. Now X will go further by transforming the global city square.”
Iaccarino tweeted that X will be “a future state of unlimited interactivity focused on audio, video, messaging, payments/banking, creating a global marketplace of ideas, products, services and opportunities.”
But the change on Twitter was met with skepticism on the social network.
Adamson said the change will be very confusing for a huge portion of Twitter’s audience, who are already disillusioned with the social platform, given the many other major changes Musk has made.
“They won’t get it,” he said. “This is a fitting end to a phenomenal spin-off of an iconic brand and business.”
Earlier this month, Musk imposed a new curfew on his digital city square. The move has been heavily criticized and could scare away more advertisers and undermine his cultural influence as a trendsetter.
The higher tweet threshold is part of an $8-a-month subscription service that Musk launched earlier this year in a bid to boost Twitter revenue. Revenue plummeted after Musk took over the company and fired roughly three-quarters of the staff to cut costs and avoid bankruptcy.
Bringing in advertisers is essential for Musk and Twitter after many fled in the months following his takeover of the social media platform for fear of damaging their brands in the enveloping chaos. Advertisers cut spending in part because of changes Musk made that allowed more hateful content to flourish and offended a broader section of the platform’s audience.
At the end of April, Musk said advertisers were back, but didn’t give details.
Musk’s decision to change the Twitter logo to an “X” also comes as Twitter faces new competition from a new Meta app, Threads, launched earlier this month. It was seen as an alternative for those who were upset by Twitter.
Threads is marketed as a text-based version of Instagram’s photo-sharing app Meta, which the company says offers “a new, separate space for real-time updates and public conversations.”
According to Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri, Threads had 100 million followers in the first five days of launch.
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