Elon Musk has made one of the seen modifications to Twitter since he took management of the social media firm final fall: changing its well known chicken brand.
In a tweet early Sunday morning Jap time, Mr. Musk mentioned that “quickly we will bid adieu to the twitter model and, progressively, all of the birds.” About 24 hours later, a stylized, black-and-white X appeared on the corporate’s web site instead of the blue chicken brand.
Twitter’s company accounts additionally adopted the brand new branding, which was projected onto the aspect of the corporate’s headquarters in San Francisco in a single day. “Lights. Digicam. X!” Linda Yaccarino, Twitter’s chief government, posted on the location, accompanying a photograph of the constructing.
“X” is a time period for what Mr. Musk has described as an “every thing app” that would mix social media, immediate messaging and cost companies, akin to the favored Chinese language app WeChat.
Mr. Musk has mentioned that purchasing Twitter is “an accelerant to creating X,” and the company entity he created to buy and management Twitter is named X Holdings.
Mr. Musk spoke on a Twitter audio livestream early Sunday to say he was altering Twitter’s brand. “It ought to have been performed a very long time in the past,” he mentioned. “Sorry it took so lengthy.”
Just a few hours later, Mr. Musk mentioned in an e-mail to Twitter’s workers that “we’re certainly altering to X.”
“That is my final message from a Twitter e-mail,” he wrote, earlier than signing off with a salute emoji.
Mr. Musk has few obstacles to creating such alterations on the firm after taking it personal as a part of his acquisition of the agency. However he may nonetheless encounter resistance from the banks which have lent him billions of {dollars} and the personal buyers he introduced into the deal, who may elevate considerations about jettisoning certainly one of Twitter’s most seen property.
The corporate noticed its promoting income plummet amid the departure of gross sales executives and worries that the location had turn out to be extra susceptible to problematic content material. It now faces a well-funded rival in Threads, the just lately launched Twitter-like service from Meta, the proprietor of Fb.
Twitter didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.
Mr. Musk has had an extended affinity for the letter X. In 1999, he co-founded X.com, an internet financial institution, and later merged it with one other start-up to create PayPal. In 2017, he mentioned that he repurchased the X.com area from PayPal.
Mr. Musk has not all the time adopted via on his public pronouncements, corresponding to when he tweeted that the corporate would create a content material moderation council to evaluate what sort of speech is suitable on the location.
However he has pressed forward in altering sure Twitter practices, like ending the free verification of distinguished customers’ accounts, denoted by a white-and-blue test mark, and charging customers a subscription price for the test mark as a substitute.
Jason Karaian contributed reporting.