Twitter owner Elon Musk announced Sunday that the app’s world-renowned bird logo would be switched to an “X” later in the day.
Musk had said the change would happen Monday, but he tweeted hours later that the “Interim X logo goes live later today.”
Early Sunday, Musk posted a short video of a flickering “X.” Later in a Twitter Spaces audio chat, he replied “Yes” when he was asked whether the logo will change.
“Yeah we’re cutting the Twitter logo off the building with blow torches,” he told an unknown speaker.
By Sunday afternoon the web address x.com, a domain returned to Musk in 2017 after it was relinquished under the merger that became PayPal, redirected to Twitter.
The shift from bird imagery to that of a capital letter will be the latest big change since he bought Twitter for $44 billion last year.
Musk tweeted that the idea of changing the logo to “X” is “To embody the imperfections in us all that make us unique.”
“And soon we shall bid adieu to the twitter brand and, gradually, all the birds,” Musk wrote.
On Sunday, Twitter CEO Linda Yaccarino said the branding change will introduce a major pivot for the microblogging platform, which she said will become a marketplace for “goods, services, and opportunities” powered by artificial intelligence.
“It’s an exceptionally rare thing — in life or in business — that you get a second chance to make another big impression,” the chief tweeted. “Twitter made one massive impression and changed the way we communicate. Now, X will go further, transforming the global town square.”
She continued, “X will connect us all in ways we’re just beginning to imagine.”
Musk put new curfews on his digital town square this month, a move that met with sharp criticism that it could drive away more advertisers and undermine its cultural influence as a trendsetter.
The higher tweet-viewing threshold is part of an $8-per-month subscription service Musk rolled out this year to boost revenue. Revenue has dropped sharply since he took over the company and laid off roughly three-fourths of the workforce to slash costs and avoid bankruptcy.
In May, Musk hired Yaccarino, then the chairman of advertising and partnerships at NBC Universal, to lead the platform.
Luring advertisers is essential for Musk and Twitter after many fled in the early months after his takeover, fearing damage to their brands in the enveloping chaos. Advertisers have cut back on spending partly because of changes Musk has made that have allowed more hateful content to flourish and offend a wider part of the platform’s audience.
Musk said in late April that advertisers had returned, but he provided no specifics.
Twitter also faces competition from Meta’s new app, Threads, launched this month. It has been seen as an alternative for those who have been souring on Twitter.
Threads is being billed as a text-based version of Meta’s photo-sharing app, Instagram, that the company has said offers “a new, separate space for real-time updates and public conversations.”
In the first five days of its launch, 100 million people signed up for Threads, Instagram head Adam Mosseri said on Threads.
Jason Abbruzzese and Dennis Romero contributed.
