Twitter replaces blue bird with an X in rebranding exercise

 

Elon Musk has unveiled a new black and white “X” logo to replace Twitter’s famous blue bird as he follows through with a major rebranding of the social media platform he bought for US$44 billion last year.

Musk replaced his own Twitter icon with a white X on a black background and posted a picture on Monday of the design projected on Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters.

The X started appearing on the top of the desktop version of Twitter on Monday, but the bird was still dominant across the phone app.

Musk had asked fans for logo ideas and chose one, which he described as minimalist Art Deco, saying it “certainly will be refined.”

“And soon we shall bid adieu to the Twitter brand and, gradually, all the birds,” Musk tweeted Sunday.

The billionaire is CEO of rocket company Space Exploration Technologies Corp., commonly known as SpaceX. And in 1999, he founded a startup called X.com, an online financial services company now known as PayPal.

The X.com web domain now redirects users to Twitter.com, Musk said.

In response to questions about what tweets would be called when the rebranding is done, Musk said they would be called Xs.