Introduction

Elon Musk has always loved the letter X so much that he shares the letter with most of his companies, and now he’s killing off Twitter’s iconic bluebird trademark in favor of the letter X in an effort to turn his $44 billion acquisition into something that truly belongs to him.

Critics see Musk’s vision of X as something like China’s WeChat, a massive app that people can use to entertain themselves and buy goods and services online, as well as post updates and message their friends.

Musk’s announcement to change the app’s logo came after months of erratic behavior by the world’s richest person, which led to reluctance from some users and alienated advertisers from the app, leaving Twitter financially troubled and increasingly vulnerable to competition.

The Risky Move

Killing a popular online brand is “extremely risky,” says Forrester analyst Mike Proulx at a time when rival apps like the new Instagram Thread and smaller startups like Bluesky are attracting users.

Proulx added to US network ‘CNBC’ that Musk “single-handedly purged the famous brand from our cultural lexicon over the past 15 years.”

Observers believe the logo change isn’t an entirely surprising move, as Musk has already converted the Twitter company name to X Corp, to be a subsidiary of X Holding Corp, a lawsuit revealed in April.

Musk said last October, before buying Twitter, that he saw the $44 billion deal as “an acceleration of Create X and it’s the application of everything.”

The letter X appears prominently in the name of Musk’s space rocket company, SpaceX. More than two decades ago, X.com was the name of Musk’s payments company, which eventually became PayPal through a merger with its then-rival.

Name changes have become quite common among large web companies, as Facebook transitioned into a meta in late 2021 and Google adopted the Alpha Bit name. However, these parent companies whose names were changed kept the branding for their core services.

The Future of X

For her part, Linda Iaccarino, who was named CEO by Musk in May, said in an email to employees on Monday that the company “will continue to delight our entire community with new experiences in voice, video, messaging, payments and banking, creating a global marketplace for ideas, goods, services and opportunities.”

Proulx says Musk’s desire to turn X into a super app required “time, money and people,” which “Twitter no longer has.” Earlier this month, Musk admitted that Twitter suffered a 50% drop in ad revenue.

Some advertisers have become concerned about promoting their products on Twitter due to reports showing an increase in hate speech and racist and abusive comments on the platform, as documented by many civil rights groups and researchers.

Musk has been trying to offset some of the decline in ads through a premium subscription service at $8 a month, as the company would need tens of millions of subscribers to make up for the losses.

Insider Intelligence analyst Jasmine Enberg said in an emailed statement that the name change marks “a bleak day for many Twitter users and advertisers” and “a clear sign that Twitter, so notorious for the past 17 years, is gone and not coming back.”

“Renaming Twitter is a reminder that Musk, not Thread or any other app, was and probably still is the killer of Twitter,” Enberg wrote.