Elon Musk gave up on the CEO position at Twitter a couple of months back and has been overseeing the roles of product design and new technology at the company. Now, Musk alongside the current CEO of Twitter have announced that the app is now being rebranded to X, a letter that has played a significant role in Musk’s journey so far. Musk has already vocalised his plans of turning Twitter into the ‘Everything app’ and renaming it to X seems to be a step in that direction.
Twitter has went through numerous changes since Musk sat in the driving seat last year and the rebranding to X seems to be the biggest change yet, which will completely change the identity of the app, bringing an end to the microblogging platform’s character as we know it now.
Twitter CEO also talked about the change via her account where she tweeted that X will be powered by AI. “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”, she says.
She says that the changes already started taking place 8 months ago through the rapid feature launches. “But we’re just getting started”, she added. In November, some of the new features of Twitter 2.0 were revealed, with the tagline stating ‘The Everything App’.“There’s absolutely no limit to this transformation. X will be the platform that can deliver, well….everything. @elonmusk and I are looking forward to working with our teams and every single one of our partners to bring X to the world”, one of her tweets read.
Elon Musk also hasn’t been tight lipped about this transformation. He has been consistently tweeting (if it’s still called that) since yesterday about how ‘X.com’ redirects to ‘Twitter.com’. Musk also reportedly sent an email last night to Twitter employees telling them about the rebrand, and that it was the last instance of him emailing from a Twitter address, according a Threads post from Platformer managing editor Zoe Schiffer.
When asked by a user as to what a tweet will be called after the rebrand, Musk replied – ‘An X’. Musk has further changed his profile picture on Twitter to an ‘X’ while his bio says ‘X.com’. His profile picture could apparently serve as the new logo of the platform as well. However, in his tweets, he says that it’s not the final logo and could be changed in the future.
History of ‘X’ in Musk’s journey
The letter X is loved by Musk quite a lot, for he has used it in number of his past ventures and projects. He co-founded X.com in 1999, that was an online banking startup, which later merged with PayPal. He also founded SpaceX, a private aerospace company that aims to colonize Mars.
In addition, he named one of his Tesla car models as Model X, an electric SUV. He then recently launched xAI, an artificial intelligence company that will create a digital super-intelligence. Musk bought the X.com domain name back from PayPal in 2017 and he is putting it to good use with the Twitter rebrand.
Reasons behind the Twitter rebrand
Musk isn’t rebranding Twitter to X just because he likes the letter, but because there are a couple of other reasons behind it. He tweeted that he would “soon bid adieu to the twitter brand and, gradually, all the birds”, referring to the iconic blue bird logo that has been associated with Twitter since its inception. He says that the X logo would be “more fitting for the future”.
Secondly, Musk has been inspired by WeChat to make Twitter the ‘Everything app’ which could also be driving his aim to rebrand the app to X. He has said in the past that he wanted to make Twitter more like WeChat, which is used in China for a variety of services such as payments, shopping, gaming, and entertainment. The rebrand also comes at a time when Twitter is facing competition from Meta’s latest Threads app.
The rebrand is taking place amid the advertising revenue loss from which Twitter hasn’t completely recovered since Musk took over. Since then, the app has been trying to make as much profit as possible through the Twitter Blue subscriptions model. Elon has also been implementing policies and features that aren’t being liked by many. He introduced a subscription model that limits the number of direct messages for non-paying users, while earlier this month, he said that non-subscribed accounts will have a limit regarding how many tweets they can read in a day.
Reactions to the Twitter rebrand
The rebranding of Twitter to X has been met with mixed reactions from users and observers. While some are praising Musk for his boldness and innovation, saying that he is bringing new life and energy to the platform. They have also expressed their curiosity and excitement about the new features and possibilities that X will offer.
Others have criticized Musk for his arrogance and recklessness, saying that he is ruining a beloved and influential platform. They have furthet expressed their nostalgia and sadness about losing the Twitter name and logo, which they said were part of the internet culture and history. They have also raised concerns about the privacy and security of their data and content on X. Moreover, some people expressed that renaming Twitter to X will also make it lose its brand recognition.
The rebranding of Twitter to X is expected to be completed by the end of this month. Whether it will be a success or a failure remains to be seen.