Another day, another Twitter story to tell. On his tweets last Sunday, Twitter owner, Elon Musk, showed his intent on rebranding the famous social media platform. After the Meta rival ‘Threads‘ launch earlier this month, Twitter is getting a revamp of its own. From the iconic blue bird logo, the company is planning to change it into a black and white “X”.
Since Elon Musk acquired the social media platform last year for $44 billion, changes have already been made. In April, filed paperwork listed Twitter as X Corp, and corporate partners were also made aware of the change. “The company’s terms of service now list ‘X Corp.’ as the firm’s official name, though it’s unclear when this change was made”, Forbes reported.
Not sure what subtle clues gave it way, but I like the letter X pic.twitter.com/nwB2tEfLr8
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 23, 2023
Blue bird to “X” logo
In a series of tweets by Twitter’s new chief executive, Linda Yaccarino, Twitter as we know it seems to be getting a complete overhaul. We might soon be getting new features within the app. “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,” Yaccarino tweeted. From the sound of it, the Twitter that we mostly knew for viral trends, and fan accounts, will undergo changes bigger than logo alteration; and it seems to be coming soon.
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.
— Linda Yaccarino (@lindayaX) July 23, 2023
Given the billionaire’s affinity for the X symbol, the move does not surprise a few. The American space exploration company co-founded by Elon Musk with Tom Mueller is called SpaceX. His car company Tesla has units called Model X. In 1999, Musk start-up a financial service company called X.com. merged with Confinity, another start-up back then. The company rebranded a year after Musk left and is now called PayPal.
I was laid off from Twitter today. I was the designer in charge of our new rebranding to X.
I learned so much in my 2.5 weeks at the company but I’m excited to see where I land next.
If you’re hiring a self taught, junior designer please DM me. Graphic design is my passion! pic.twitter.com/n90VkmDuYb
— Alex Cohen (@anothercohen) July 24, 2023
Elon Musk then bought back the domain X.com from Paypal last 2017. It can also be recalled that he stated in October last year that “Buying Twitter is an accelerant to creating X, the everything app.” Given the term, an “everything app” will offer a variety of services to its users and most probably will go beyond the usual messaging, and video and photo-posting app.
X.Com as a super app
An everything app or super app has been defined by Gartner as an application that provides end users (customers, partners, or employees) with a set of core features plus access to independently created mini apps. “I think of, like, WeChat in China, which is actually a great, great app, but there’s no WeChat movement outside of China. And I think that there’s a real opportunity to create that,” Musk has stated during his meeting with Twitter employees.
As of writing this article, X.com now redirects to Twitter. When the overhaul happens, and Twitter becomes X, what will our tweets be called, then? Just before publishing this article, we noticed that the Twitter rebrand is now complete and the Twitter bird, in the upper left corner, was replaced by the X logo on their website now.
Photo credit: The feature image is symbolic and has been done by Media Whalestock.
Sources: Derek Saul (Forbes) / Kalley Huang (The New York Times) / Shirin Ghaffary (Vox)
