From Twitter to X: Elon Musk Begins Erasing an Iconic Web Model

For greater than 10 years, Twitter has been recognizable for its blue and white fowl brand, which grew to become an emblem of the social community’s distinctive tradition and lexicon. To “tweet” grew to become a verb. A “tweet” referred to a publish. “Tweeps” grew to become the moniker for Twitter workers.

Late on Sunday, Elon Musk started eliminating all of it.

The tech billionaire, who purchased Twitter final yr, renamed the social platform X.com on its web site and began changing the fowl brand with a stylized model of the twenty fourth letter of the Latin alphabet. Inside Twitter’s headquarters in San Francisco, X logos had been projected within the cafeteria, whereas convention rooms had been renamed to phrases with X in them, together with “eXposure,” “eXult” and “s3Xy,” in response to pictures seen by The New York Instances.

Mr. Musk had lengthy mentioned he may make the title change, however he hastened the method in a tweet early Sunday when he declared that “quickly we will bid adieu to the twitter model and, step by step, all of the birds.” He has mentioned he hopes to show Twitter into an “every thing app” known as X, which might embody not solely social networking but in addition banking and purchasing.

Early on Monday, Mr. Musk additionally shared a photo of an enormous X projected on Twitter’s San Francisco workplace constructing with the caption: “Our headquarters tonight.”

The strikes — that are persevering with — are probably the most seen modifications that Mr. Musk has made to Twitter since he closed the deal to purchase the corporate in October. Behind the scenes, he has taken many steps to overtake the agency, eliminating hundreds of workers and altering the platform’s options, together with badges that had been meant to confirm customers, in addition to the foundations governing what can and might’t be mentioned on the service.

But the title and brand modifications had been unattainable to disregard. And by beginning to take away the Twitter title, Mr. Musk tossed out an entrenched model that had been round since 2006 — when the corporate was based — and that had delighted and pissed off celebrities, politicians, athletes and different customers in equal measure. Twitter launched its blue fowl mascot in 2010 and up to date it two years later.

Many Twitter customers, who’ve spent years tweeting and build up their presence on the positioning, appeared alienated by the shift. “Has all people seen the (eXecrable) new brand?” the actor Mark Hamill tweeted on Monday, with the hashtag #ByeByeBirdie. Others noticed the transfer as Mr. Musk’s newest blow to the positioning, with some stubbornly saying they may nonetheless name the positioning Twitter and can proceed to “tweet.”

When manufacturers turn out to be verbs, it’s the “holy grail,” mentioned Mike Proulx, a vp and analysis director at Forrester, as a result of it means they’ve turn out to be a part of fashionable tradition.

“The app itself has turn out to be a cultural phenomenon in all types of how,” he mentioned. “In a single fell sweep, Elon Musk has primarily worn out 15 years of brand name worth from Twitter and is now primarily ranging from scratch.”

Mr. Musk risked the wrath of Twitter’s customers at the same time as he can in poor health afford to upset them. His firm faces monetary difficulties and elevated competitors, with rival Meta releasing an app this month for real-time, public conversations known as Threads. The brand new app shortly racked up 100 million downloads in lower than every week, although use of the app is below scrutiny.

Mike Carr, a co-founder of the branding firm NameStormers, mentioned Mr. Musk’s X brand might be interpreted as having an ominous “Massive Brother” tech overlord vibe. Not like the blue fowl, which he described as heat and cuddly however maybe a bit dated and weighed down by dangerous press, the brand new brand is “very harsh,” he mentioned.

Nonetheless, it conjured phrases like “X marks the spot” and will assist Mr. Musk differentiate the platform from its Twitter baggage, Mr. Carr mentioned.

“In the event that they do that mistaken and it was anyone apart from Elon Musk, he’d be operating the next threat as a result of individuals might begin making enjoyable of it,” mentioned Mr. Carr, who has helped provide you with names for hundreds of shoppers, together with CarMax, the used automobile firm.

Mr. Musk has lengthy been within the X title. In 1999, he helped discovered X.com, a web-based financial institution. The corporate modified its title after it merged with one other start-up to type what would turn out to be PayPal.

In 2017, Mr. Musk mentioned he had repurchased the X.com area from PayPal. “No plans proper now, but it surely has nice sentimental worth to me,” he tweeted on the time.

Tesla, Mr. Musk’s electrical automaker, additionally has a sport utility car known as the Mannequin X. One among Mr. Musk’s sons, X Æ A-12 Musk, is commonly known as X for brief. The holding corporations created to shut the acquisition of Twitter had been named X Holdings. Mr. Musk additionally leads a synthetic intelligence firm known as xAI.

“I just like the letter X,” he posted on Sunday.

Mr. Musk has proven a disdain towards Twitter’s earlier company tradition. He has quibbled with the variety of fowl references within the firm’s inside workforce names and merchandise. At one level, he modified the title of a crowdsourced fact-checking function to “Neighborhood Notes” from “Birdwatch.” He lately additionally had somebody cowl the w in Twitter’s title at its San Francisco headquarters.

Amongst those that didn’t appear bothered by the change was Jack Dorsey, a Twitter founder and former chief government. He mentioned in a tweet on Monday that whereas a rebrand was not “important” to reaching Mr. Musk’s imaginative and prescient, there was an argument for it.

“The Twitter model carries quite a lot of baggage,” Mr. Dorsey wrote. “However all that issues is the utility it supplies, not the title.”

Martin Grasser, a San Francisco artist who was part of a team in 2011 that helped design the newest Twitter fowl brand, mentioned it was meant to convey “simplicity, brevity and readability.” The objective was to have a brand that was as memorable as Apple’s or Nike’s, he mentioned.

Mr. Grasser mentioned Mr. Musk might do no matter he wished with the model, however “I hope the fowl occupies an area in tradition that could be a pleased reminiscence or turns into a kind of logos that belongs to tradition somewhat than an organization.”