Elon Musk ushers in Twitter's dark era with "X" rebrand
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Another wave of farewells to Twitter has been set in motion after Elon Musk announced yet another change to the social platform. The tech CEO purchased the app in a massive $44 billion deal in October 2022. With less than a year under his belt, he has managed to roll out a series of changes that have left users perplexed and wanting to ditch the platform altogether.
His latest move has nothing to do with a new feature but rather the look of the microblogging site. Since its 2006 introduction to the online space, Twitter has been recognized for its unique shade of blue and its bird logo. Musk, however, is ditching the tried-and-true theme. “And soon we shall bid adieu to the Twitter brand and, gradually, all the birds,” he tweeted just before midnight on Saturday (July 22). He also clued users in on his plan to switch over to black and to implement an “X” in the bird’s place. He claimed the change would “embody the imperfections in us all that make us unique.”
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 23, 2023
Today (July 23), he disclosed that X.com, an online bank he co-founded in 2009, now redirects clicks back to Twitter. The bank merged with Confinity in 2000 to form PayPal; Musk regained ownership of the domain in 2017, according to Forbes. Now, it is only a matter of time before tweets simply become x’s when the rebrand goes live sometime today.
Under his leadership, Musk ditched the legacy verification process and implemented a monthly subscription for the check mark icon (Twitter Blue), laid off more than 6,000 staff members, including the co-founders of his newly formed rival Spill, and felt the heat from countless glitches and widespread outages of the platform.
In May, the Tesla founder revealed that he had chosen Linda Yaccarino as his successor. “My role will transition to being executive chair and CTO, overseeing product, software, and system operators,” he said in his announcement. At that time, he also introduced “X” as the new company name. Yaccarino, a former NBCUniversal marketing executive, assumed the CEO role at the top of June.
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