Elon Musk stated he was about to make one of the crucial 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 Eastern time, Mr. Musk stated that “soon we shall bid adieu to the twitter brand and, gradually, all the birds.”
He added shortly after, “If a good enough X logo is posted tonight,” it will “go live worldwide tomorrow.”
“X” is a time period for what Mr. Musk has described as an “everything app” that might mix social media, prompt messaging and cost companies, akin to the favored Chinese app WeChat.
Mr. Musk has stated 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 should have been done a long time ago,” he stated. “Sorry it took so long.”
A number of hours later, Mr. Musk stated in an e-mail to Twitter’s workers that “we are indeed changing to X” and that it was occurring “today.” “This is my last message from a Twitter email,” he wrote, earlier than signing off with a salute emoji.
Mr. Musk has few limitations to creating such alterations on the firm after taking it non-public as a part of his acquisition of the agency. But he may nonetheless encounter resistance from the banks which have lent him billions of {dollars} and the non-public buyers he introduced into the deal, who may elevate considerations about jettisoning certainly one of Twitter’s most seen belongings.
The firm noticed its promoting income plummet amid the departure of gross sales executives and worries that the positioning had change into extra liable to problematic content material. It now faces a well-funded rival in Threads, the not too long ago launched Twitter-like service from Meta, the proprietor of Facebook.
Twitter didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.
Mr. Musk has had a protracted affinity for the letter X. In 1999, he co-founded X.com, a web based financial institution, and later merged it with one other start-up to create PayPal. In 2017, he stated that he repurchased the X.com area from PayPal.
Mr. Musk has not at all times adopted by way of on his public pronouncements, similar to when he tweeted that the corporate would create a content material moderation council to guage what sort of speech is suitable on the positioning.
But he has pressed forward in altering sure Twitter practices, like ending the free verification of distinguished customers’ accounts, denoted by a white-and-blue verify mark, and charging customers a subscription payment for the verify mark as an alternative.