Ever since Elon Musk, the owner of Tesla and Space X, acquired Twitter, it feels like the social media platform has been nothing but a big digital testing ground for his ideas and potential features. This round, though, he’s decidedly had enough of the platform name and is renaming it, simply to X.
In a tweet via his official account, Musk posted the message “And soon we shall bid adieu to the brand and, gradually, all the birds”. And for those that aren’t convinced that the founder of Tesla isn’t going through with it, he’s already replaced his profile picture with a stylised image of the letter X, as well as pinned a 3-second clip of the social network’s new namesake on his main page. Oh, and he reportedly also sent out an email to staff, the contents of which stated “this will be the last email that I will ever send from a Twitter email address”.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 23, 2023
It’s no secret that Musk has long been a fan of the “X” branding. From the Tesla Model X to SpaceX, his latest venture into AI is a company named xAI. As to why the rebranding to a single alphabet, Musk says that he has envisioned the platform becoming an “everything app” but didn’t provide further details on that. Some believe that he could be referring to the popular China-made app, WeChat, and how it is used as a gateway for shopping and payments, along with social media.
And soon we shall bid adieu to the twitter brand and, gradually, all the birds
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 23, 2023
That being said, it can also be argued that Musk’s decision to rebrand Twitter to X is a dangerous move; the social network has already lost more than half its ad revenue since November last year, due to the changes in which content is moderated on the site. Of course, it can also be said that the rebranding is the man’s way to cut off ties with the platform’s former leadership, along with all the decisions they had made before his arrival.
