After recently facing big competition in the face of Mark Zuckerberg and Meta’s Threads, it appears that the Twitter bird is about to become extinct. On Saturday evening, Elon Musk announced his social media platform’s revamp—to the rather unimaginative titled X—by saying: “soon we shall bid adieu to the twitter brand and, gradually, all the birds”. He added: “If a good enough X logo is posted tonight, we’ll make [it] go live worldwide tomorrow.”
Here’s what we know…
What is X?
X appears to be the latest stage of Musk’s evolution of the Twitter platform he purchased for $44bn on October 27, 2022. After a number of poorly received shake-ups, along with introducing a subscription fee for blue ticks, the X rebrand is just that at present. However it’s believed to represent a drastic change in strategy for the platform.
So, Twitter is called X now?
Not yet, but it’s coming. Of course, the official company name had been changed to X Corp back in April, so it’s not entirely surprising.
Will we still tweet when Twitter is X?
No. According to Musk, your tweets will now be known as, erm, “Xs”.
Is X really Musk’s ‘everything app’?
It appears so. Musk has been talking about his grand vision X for some time now. Modelled on the Chinese social media behemoth, WeChat, Musk aims to turn Twitter—sorry, X— into the largest ‘super-app’ in the world. This would include messaging and video chatting, video games, photo sharing, food delivery and ride service, banking, shopping, in-app payments and much more.
On Sunday evening, new Twitter chief executive Linda Yaccarino posted a picture of Twitter’s HQ, with the rebranded X beamed onto it. She then laid out the plan via a series of tweets, saying: “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.”
If and when the distinctive pale blue Twitter bird disappears, it won’t be the first rebranding of the platform. In 2018, Twitter briefly became twttr, before the vowel-less experiment was swiftly reversed.